The numbers: Mortgage rates have risen to the highest level in 20 years. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.94% as of October 20, according to data released by Freddie Mac on Thursday. That’s...
Tag: Economic News
The Stock Market Had a Great Week, but It Hasn’t Gone Anywhere in a Month. Inside a Very Volatile Market.
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IRS releases new federal tax brackets and standard deductions. Here’s how they affect your family’s tax bill.
America’s high inflation rate will produce a 7% increase in the size of the standard deduction when workers file their taxes on their 2023 income, according to new inflation adjustments from the Inter...
Southern California’s Notorious Container Ship Backup Ends
The backup of container ships off Southern California’s coast that was at the heart of U.S. supply chain congestion during the Covid-19 pandemic has effectively disappeared. The queue of ships waiting...
‘Mounting fear is that something else will break along the way’: Stock-market investors look ahead to PCE inflation data amid Fed overtightening worries
Some investors are on edge that the Federal Reserve may be overtightening monetary policy in its bid to tame hot inflation, as markets look ahead to a reading this coming week from the Fed’s preferred...
Dow jumps almost 750 points as stocks end higher, bond yields fall after reports Fed may shift to smaller rate hikes after November
U.S. stocks closed sharply higher Friday as investors weighed a story from the Wall Street Journal and comments from Federal Reserve officials suggesting that the central bank might shift to smaller i...
Amazon earnings: ‘The good news is the consumer is still spending. The bad news is they’re not spending on e-commerce.’
Money is still flowing despite concerns about the economy, but Wall Street is wondering how much of that money is being spent on Amazon.com Inc. “The good news is the consumer is still spending,” D.A....
IRS sets new 401(k) limits — investors can save a lot more money in 2023
People can contribute up to $22,500 in 401(k) accounts and $6,500 in IRAs in 2023, the IRS said Friday. For 401(k)s, that’s an almost 10% increase from 2022’s contribution limit of $20,500. For IRAs, ...
New IRS tax brackets and standard deduction could save families hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Now, for the bad news.
In a time of rising costs, the Internal Revenue Service just raised income-tax brackets through new inflation adjustments for next year. It might feel tough sometimes to link the IRS with the concept ...
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...
Opinion: Don’t have $13 million? The lifetime estate- and gift-tax exemptions for 2023 still matter to you.
The wealthiest families in the U.S. will get a bit of inflation-adjusted relief from the IRS in 2023, with the lifetime estate-tax exemption increasing to $12.9 million for individuals, up from $12.06...
UBS has released its annual house-price bubble report. Here are the most overvalued markets.
The housing market is in something of its own recession as mortgage rates have surged. If the economist consensus is right about an existing home sales report due later in the morning, then sales will...
How to save a bundle on your tax return
This is Part Two of our list of suggested year-end strategies. Part 1 discusses gaming the federal standard deduction, and managing capital gains and losses. The tax environment is getting friendlier ...
Have the bond vigilantes who attacked the U.K. killed off modern monetary theory? MMT proponent Stephanie Kelton says that’s nonsense.
As investors assesses the remarkable turnaround in fiscal policy from one of the world’s number-six economy, the U.K., the one conclusion surely is that a nation’s financial flexibility is limited by ...
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...
These 11 stocks can lead your portfolio’s rebound after the S&P 500 ‘earnings recession’ and a market bottom next year
This may surprise you: Wall Street analysts expect earnings for the S&P 500 to increase 8% during 2023, despite all the buzz about a possible recession as the Federal Reserve tightens monetary pol...
Stock market’s wild gyrations put earnings in focus as inflation crushes Fed ‘pivot’ hopes
Unrelenting inflation has dashed hopes for a quick pivot away from aggressive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, which in turn is undermining the U.S. corporate earnings outlook for 2023 and ...
The top 25 market events of the last 25 years
On an October morning 25 years ago, MarketWatch started providing real-time news and market data to the general public on the internet. Individuals were fleeing their stockbrokers for new online platf...
Tesla, Goldman Sachs, Netflix, AT&T, and Other Stocks for Investors to Watch This Week
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The Fed Has Another Problem. States Are Doling Out Stimulus Funds
A spending spree is coming, and it may do more harm than good. An analysis by Deutsche Bank economists shows that 20 U.S. states have recently enacted, or are in the process of enacting, stimulus prog...
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...
What bank earnings tell us about how consumers are doing with high inflation, recession worries — ‘It’s not a crack in current numbers’
For all the worries about inflation’s pinch and the chance of a recession, just-released earnings reports from big banks indicate the wallets of many regular Americans are generally holding up as they...
‘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...
Opinion: Bernanke’s Nobel prize is harmful because it rewards faulty thinking on how banks actually work
The Nobel Memorial Prize awarded to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig is controversial, to say the least. Mainstream economists are generally delighted that the Nobel Committee has at la...
The debt vigilantes are back, and even U.S. assets will struggle. Here’s what to buy instead, says one veteran fund manager.
Markets are struggling to extend the previous session’s impressive rebound. There may be a number of reasons why a worse-than-expected inflation report was eventually shrugged off with such vigor on T...
Residential housing demand ‘cratered’ as mortgage rates spiked, analyst says
Raymond James analyst Buck Horne lowered ratings on all of the home-builder stocks he covers, as he believes the recent “relentless” climb in mortgage rates has ensured a housing recession. “Interest ...