Market News

The probability of a one-point increase rose to around 79% on Wednesday, up from around 12%.

U.S. inflation reached 9.1% in June, its highest rate in nearly 41 years.

The companies in the S&P 500 paid out a record $140.6 billion in dividends in the most recent quarter. That’s up from $137.6 billion in the first three months of the year and $123.4 billion in the same quarter last year.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to 5.30%. That is down from 5.70% last week. Mortgage rates haven’t recorded such a big weekly decline since December 2008, when the rate fell from 5.97% to 5.53%.

Fed fund futures show that traders assign a roughly 96% probability that the Federal Reserve will deliver a 0.75-percentage-point rate hike at its meeting later this month, according to CME Group. That is up from 84% a day ago, after minutes from the central bank's recent meeting showed that taming inflation was the main goal.

The U.S. has recorded more than 11 million unfilled job openings in six of the past seven months, four million more monthly openings than was typical before Covid-19 hit the economy in early 2020.

The S&P 500 fell 21% through Thursday, suffering its worst first half of a year since 1970. Investment-grade bonds lost 11%, posting their worst start to a year in history.

A venture of a New York investment firm and a U.S. residential developer has agreed to pay $1.75 billion for six Manhattan rental apartment buildings, the highest price tag for a New York multifamily portfolio since the beginning of the pandemic.

The price of condo sales there has been down markedly much of this year compared to the months before the tragedy. Surfside's average condo sales price in April and May was $1.3 million, or 64% lower than in those months a year earlier.

Existing-home sale prices reached a record median of $407,600 in May, while sales slid for the fourth consecutive month. Mortgage rates have nearly doubled since January.