Market Volatility

August 13, 2024

Investors this year added an average of $556 million a week into U.S.-based derivative-income exchange-traded funds, which sell options contracts on stocks held in the fund to juice returns. Net flows into those products plunged to about $117 million last week.

Travel Spending

August 12, 2024

Hotels and airlines expect Americans to partake in less leisure travel and pare down the trips they take in the months ahead.

Mortgage Rates

August 9, 2024

The average rate on the standard 30-year fixed mortgage fell around a quarter percentage point to 6.47%, a low not seen since May 2023 and the sharpest weekly decline in around nine months.

Office Multi Distress

August 8, 2024

More than $40 billion of office loans were in distress at the end of the second quarter, which is around three times the value of distressed apartment loans. But the pool of apartment mortgages that could get into difficulty in the future is larger—$56.9 billion are at risk of distress, compared with $50.9 billion for offices.

Department Stores

August 7, 2024

Major department stores now occupy less than half of all anchor spaces at enclosed shopping malls, with roughly 500 vacant department-store spaces nationwide.

Retirement Cash

August 6, 2024

People who leave cash uninvested in retirement accounts lose out on more than $172 billion a year in retirement wealth as a result.

US Indexes

August 5, 2024

A stock-market selloff intensified around the world, sending U.S. indexes sliding and volatility spiking to its highest levels since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Housing Concern

August 2, 2024

A July poll showed that voters rank housing as their second biggest concern when it comes to high prices—behind only groceries. That is a shift from a November 2021 poll, which found that housing was ranked below the cost of groceries, gas and utility bills.

Food Inflation

August 1, 2024

Americans in the past two years spent more of their income on food than they have in three decades.

Fed Projections

July 31, 2024

Fed officials’ quarterly economic projections have penciled in an interest-rate outlook suggesting that, once they make their first move, they could cut rates by a quarter percentage point roughly once every quarter.