Bank of America stock plunges, leading selloff in shares of largest U.S. banks

Shares of many of America’s largest banks are falling sharply this week after a period of outperformance that saw Goldman Sachs Group GS, -2.32% claw back practically all of its losses from earlier in...

Here’s where investors made a ‘risk-free’ 6.6% return in the past four U.S. recessions

Who says bonds can’t be flashy? Investing in the nearly $24 trillion U.S. Treasury market and other forms of government-backed debt could be a good bet next year, particularly if another recession hit...

Why Monday’s selloff in the stock market could be the start of the next leg lower

Monday’s punishing selloff could be the beginning of the next leg lower for stocks as a sense of complacency has taken hold in markets following a stellar October and November, several strategists tol...

S&P 500, Nasdaq post worst day in month after strong data fuels worry about Fed rate hikes

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes recorded their worst day in almost a month on Monday, after a hotter-than-expected U.S. services-sector reading fueled concerns that the Federal Reserve ma...

Most deeply inverted Treasury curve in more than 4 decades has one upbeat takeaway for investors

One of the bond market’s most reliable indicators of impending U.S. recessions is pointed in a pretty pessimistic direction right now, but contains at least one optimistic message: The Federal Reserve...

U.S. stocks have worst day in nearly three weeks as hawkish Fed speak, China worries rattle markets

U.S. stocks had their worst day in nearly three weeks on Monday as protests in China raised global-growth risks and Federal Reserve officials said more interest-rate increases will be needed to subdue...

Year-end rally? Bullish stock-market pattern set to collide with stagflation fears

The period between now and year-end marks a historically bullish final stretch of the year for U.S. stocks, particularly just before and after Christmas. The question for investors is whether favorabl...

Is the market bottom in? 5 reasons U.S. stocks could continue to suffer heading into next year.

With the S&P 500 holding above 4,000 and the CBOE Volatility Gauge, known as the “Vix” or Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” VIX, +0.74% having fallen to one of its lowest levels of the year, many invest...

Is the stock market open on Black Friday? Thanksgiving week trading hours for major assets.

It’s going to be a short week on Wall Street. U.S. stock exchanges will be closed for Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, Nov. 24, and will reopen the next day only for an abbreviated session on Black Frida...

2-year Treasury yield reaches one-week high as traders assess likelihood of more Fed rate hikes

Treasury yields jumped on Friday, sending the 2-year rate to a one-week high, after Boston Fed President Susan Collins put another aggressive 75-basis-point rate hike on the table for December’s polic...

This is the chart that rattled U.S. financial markets on Thursday

One chart is all it took to move financial markets on Thursday. That chart was presented by St. Louis Fed President James Bullard as part of a presentation in Louisville, Ky., and it shows where he se...

More trouble is brewing in the $24 trillion Treasury market: This time, it’s about central clearing

Efforts to reduce risks within the nearly $24 trillion U.S. Treasury market, the world’s deepest and most liquid securities market, are ironically creating angst among market players. The anxiety is c...

Opinion: The floodgates are open for grandparents to super-size college savings for grandkids

If you’re a grandparent looking to save the day by helping your grandchildren pay for college, take a second look at a tax-advantaged 529 college savings plan before the end of the year. Rule changes ...

Credit carnage spurs bargains on bonds tied to $16 trillion pile of U.S. household debt

Big bargains have made a roaring comeback on bonds tied to the $16.2 trillion pile of U.S. consumer debt. Higher borrowing costs, tighter credit conditions and sharp losses have been defining forces o...

Fed warns of ‘low’ market liquidity in $24 trillion Treasury market, in latest financial stability report

The Federal Reserve on Friday confirmed what many investors were saying for some time: the $24 trillion Treasury market has been experiencing low levels of market liquidity in recent months. The centr...

Dow ends 500 points lower, Nasdaq falls 3.4% after Fed raises rates, Powell signals terminal interest rate will be higher than expected

U.S. stock indexes finished a volatile session with losses on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve announced the fourth straight jumbo increase in its benchmark interest rate and hinted at a potential ...

U.S. Treasury sweetens the pot on I-bonds by adding a fixed rate

After record-breaking sales of I-bonds in October, the U.S. Treasury is dangling another good deal in front of savers for the next six months.  Starting Nov. 2, when I-bonds will be available again af...

250 years of history is telling investors to bet on Treasury bonds in 2023, Bank of America says

Benchmark U.S. Treasury bonds are facing their worst annual returns since 1788, but a big bounce is likely in the new year, along with a stock rout. That’s according to a team of strategists at Bank o...

Opinion: There’s a rush to buy I-bonds to lock in a high yield, but there may be an even better deal next week

It’s hard to imagine that there could be a better deal for parking up to $10,000 in savings than Series I bonds, at this very moment. The 9.62% yield is top-notch, and you can count the hours before i...

Yellen warns of ‘dangerous and volatile environment’ as she pledges to bolster Treasury market

““We’ve experienced energy shocks, food shocks, supply shocks, persistent inflation in many countries around the world, rising interests rates in many parts of the world and we have seen some financia...

U.S. stock futures surge after Wall Street’s best week since June

U.S. stock futures surged out of the gate late Sunday, after Wall Street notched its best week since June. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YM00, +0.62% jumped more than 200 points, or 0.7%, on Su...

Why the housing market should brace for double-digit mortgage rates in 2023

Even if Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his cohorts stopped hiking policy rates soon, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate still would climb to 10%, according to Christopher Whalen, chairman of ...

‘Fragile’ Treasury market is at risk of ‘large scale forced selling’ or surprise that leads to breakdown, BofA says

The world’s deepest and most liquid fixed-income market is in big, big trouble. For months, traders, academics, and other analysts have fretted that the $23.7 trillion Treasurys market might be the so...

Why stock market investors should wait for the 10-year Treasury to ‘blink’

When a key part of the U.S. bond market starts shrugging off new Federal Reserve interest rate hikes or tough talk on inflation, it’s probably time to buy stocks, according to James Paulsen, the Leuth...

Where Goldman says investors should be looking for bargains. Hint: the S&P 500 is too expensive

The S&P 500 index has declined by 22.7% year to date, but strategists at Goldman Sachs think it’s still too expensive.  The large-cap index started the year with a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of...

Classic 60/40 investing strategy sees worst return in 100 years. How about 40/60?

Rules of thumb in investing appear to no longer apply in the carnage of 2022 in financial markets. Advocates for the 60/40 portfolio split, designed to capture the upside of stocks, but offer investor...

‘Growing wealth gap and rising inflation … hurt the global economy at almost every turn,’ Jamie Dimon says

What a difference 25 years can make. The world today is a markedly different place from the world that existed at MarketWatch’s inception in October 1997. JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM, +1.66% CEO Jami...

‘This is not QE or QT. This is none of those.’ Why the U.S. Treasury is exploring debt buybacks

The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday said it plans to start talking with primary dealers in late October about the potential for it to begin buying back some of its older debt to help stave off mark...

This is how high interest rates might rise, and what could scare the Federal Reserve into a policy pivot

The stock market’s reaction to the latest inflation report Thursday underlined just how confused and fearful investors are. The S&P 500 SPX, +2.60% plunged as much as 3% shortly after the open as ...

Opinion: $22 billion in I-bond sales can’t be wrong. Why you may want to buy them even when their rate resets soon

I-bonds’ sky-high interest rate is poised to fall to 6.48% when they reset next month, according to industry experts. Still, that would be the third-highest level since they were sold in 1998. Though ...

U.S. stock futures advance ahead of inflation data

U.S. stock-index futures advanced Thursday ahead of the week’s big event, the release of September consumer price inflation data. What’s happening Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average YM00, +0....

Why questions are swirling about who will buy more than $31 trillion of U.S. debt — and at what price

For the first time ever, U.S. national debt crossed above $31 trillion this month, at a time when the Federal Reserve is in retreat from buying government debt and foreign investors’ interest in it is...