New-Home Sales Surge. It’s Still a Mixed Picture for Housing.

Text size Sales of new homes rose in October. Here: completed and under construction new homes in Trappe, Maryland. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images Sales of new homes unexpectedly rose in October, pai...

Stocks Have Already Bottomed. How We Know.

The ride upward won’t be easy, but there are mounting signals that the stock market has already hit its low point.  For starters, the S&P 500 is down 17% from its all-time high of 4796 hit in earl...

It’s Time for the Stock Market to Worry About Recession

The stock market is so over the Federal Reserve—but that doesn’t mean it’s out of the woods just yet. Attention is now turning to the U.S. economy—and whether it sinks into recession will determine if...

Fed Tightening Is Having More Impact Than You Might Think

We’ve learned a lot about the transmission of disease in the past few years. Ideas, good and bad, are spread similarly. Robert Shiller, the Yale University Nobel laureate, wrote in Irrational Exuberan...

13 Ways to Invest in India, the World’s Fastest-Growing Major Economy

India, home to more than 1.4 billion people, has long been a country with great promise and owner-led businesses accustomed to generating large amounts of cash. But India’s rise has been fitful, and o...

Alibaba Gets a Price Target Cut After Strong Earnings

Text size Benchmark analyst Fawne Jiang maintained her Buy rating on Alibaba despite cutting her price target. AFP via Getty Images Alibaba Group Holding stock popped on Thursday, prompting an analyst...

The Stock Market Has Stopped Worrying About the Fed. It’s Time to Worry About Recession.

The stock market is so over the Federal Reserve—but that doesn’t mean it’s out of the woods just yet. Attention is now turning to the U.S. economy—and whether it sinks into recession will determine if...

Fed must keep raising rates until it is certain inflation has stopped climbing, Kashkari says

The Federal Reserve needs to keep raising interest rates until it is sure inflation has hit a ceiling, said Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari on Thursday. The central bank can’t be overly persua...

It’s Been a Rough Year for Stocks and Bonds. What to Do in 2023.

With more than a month to go, 2022 is all but certain to go down as an annus horribilis for both stocks and bonds. The crucial question for investors: What does that portend for the year ahead? The re...

History says inflation could persist for a decade

If you are a retiree, or even near to retirement, you are probably more vulnerable to inflation than most. Your cost of living is probably rising faster than your income. You’re lucky if any pension o...

Opinion: Opinion: What Bullard got wrong about a 7% fed funds (and why he said it anyway)

An influential Federal Reserve official briefly spooked the stock SPX, -0.31% and bond TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.769% markets on Thursday by warning that the central bank may have to raise interest rates much fu...

Fed’s Waller says market has overreacted to consumer inflation data: ‘We’ve got a long, long way to go’

Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller said Sunday that financial markets seem to have overreacted to the softer-than-expected October consumer price inflation data last week. “It was just one data p...

U.S. stocks could rally another 25% now that Fed no longer has ‘back against the wall’ in inflation fight

One of Wall Street’s most implacable bulls has laid out his argument for why he thinks U.S. stocks can continue to rally into the year’s end after Thursday’s game-changing October inflation data. Tom ...

‘We’ve seen this before,” warns BofA. Why inflation could take until 2024 to fall to 3% and weigh on stocks.

U.S. stocks roared higher Thursday after October’s consumer-price index showed inflation rising at a less aggressive annual pace than expected, spurring hopes that the Federal Reserve’s inflation flig...

‘Only time will tell if September was the nadir:’ Zillow reports sharp home-value declines in these cities, amid grim outlook for U.S. housing market

Winter is coming, and the real-estate market is slowly coming to a standstill. According to a new report by Zillow Z, -1.63%, the typical home in the U.S. saw its value barely inch up between Septembe...

Why Higher Interest Rates Won’t Solve the Inflation Problem

Interest rates are heading higher, and the economic toll from the rapid, ongoing rise in the cost of credit is only starting to unfold. But higher rates won’t fully fix the inflation problem. There ar...

Apple Issues iPhone Supply Warning. But the Real Issue Is Demand.

Big Tech just can’t catch a break. After a dismal earnings season, in which Apple was one of the only bright sparks, the tech giant offered up its own bad news Sunday. Apple said Covid restrictions in...

2-year Treasury yield pulls back from 15-year high after October jobs data

U.S. Treasury yields saw a mixed finish Friday, with the yield on the 2-year note rising edging down a day after ending at a more-than-150-year high as investors assessed a stronger-than-expected Octo...

Pfizer Stock’s Post-Covid Future Looks Healthy

These reports, excerpted and edited by Barron’s, were issued recently by investment and research firms. The reports are a sampling of analysts’ thinking; they should not be considered the views or rec...

Opinion: How Powell pivoted away from the Fed’s dovish message and tanked the markets

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is learning on the job. He didn’t repeat the mistake he made in his July press conference, when he said some things that markets interpreted as signs that the Fed was wavering ...

Fed approves another jumbo interest-rate hike but also signals go-slower strategy

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved the fourth straight jumbo increase in a key U.S. interest rate and signaled rates are likely to go higher than previously forecast. Yet the central bank also ...

Why did inflation surge to 40-year highs? Here are 4 causes of the Fed’s mistake

The first was being unaware that the foundation of the U.S. banking system had been eroded away by complex mortgage securities that carried high credit ratings but turned out to be toxic during a broa...

Move over Florida — Pennsylvania dominates ‘Best Places to Retire’ rankings

Sure, Florida still has some allure for retirees, but Lancaster, Pa. nabbed the top spot for the best retirement destination amid concerns about housing affordability. According to U.S. News & Wor...

Will Home Prices Crash? Don’t Count on It. Here’s Why.

The housing market is cooling, but the downturn may be overhyped. That is both a blessing and a curse. Data released this past week showed that U.S. home prices fell in August at the steepest month-ov...

What the midterm elections mean for the housing market — and one ‘politically contentious’ issue that splits Democrats and Republicans

The midterm U.S. elections are coming. And elections have consequences for the housing market, according to a new report from investment bank Cowen. The report by Cowen’s Jaret Seiberg noted that the ...

Don’t Expect the Stock Market to Rally, Even if GOP Wins Control of Congress

The outcome of the midterm elections on Nov. 8 could disappoint investors, regardless of which party they support. According to Wall Street lore, stocks usually perform strongly following the midterms...

Millions of working Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck — and running out of cash as another recession looms

Inflation is taking its toll on people’s emergency funds. The share of workers who say they are living paycheck-to-paycheck has surged among middle- to high-income earners — 63% and 49%, respectively ...

China outnumbers the U.S. for the first time in this ranking of the world’s ‘best’ universities and U.S. economy will likely fall into recession, former Fed official says

Hi, MarketWatchers. Don’t miss these top stories. China outnumbers the U.S. for the first time in this ranking of the world’s ‘best’ universities Artificial intelligence is among the few fields that b...

Why investors are fleeing Chinese assets as Xi tightens grip on power

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, secured a groundbreaking third leadership term on Sunday and introduced a new Politburo Standing Committee stacked with loyalists in a clean sweep not seen since the er...

Opinion: Stock market bulls have a new story to sell you. Don’t believe them — they’re just in the ‘bargaining’ stage of grief

Might the bear market’s losses at its recent low have gotten so bad that it was actually good news? Some eager stock bulls I monitor are advancing this convoluted rationale. The outline of their argum...

‘From Bambi to Godzilla.’ Strategist David Rosenberg skewers the Federal Reserve as he sees a 30% hit to home prices and the S&P 500 returning to an early 2020 low

The last time David Rosenberg shared his outlook for the U.S. stock market and the economy with MarketWatch, in late May, it was depressing enough. Rosenberg is the widely followed president and chief...

Mortgage bankers expect rates to drop to 5.4% in 2023. What will home prices do?

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — High mortgage rates and recession fears are hurting home prices, so expect growth to be flat this year, one expert says. “Our forecast is for home-price growth moderation to continu...