If you are an index-fund investor, you’re probably feeling pretty good right now — the S&P 500 has returned 12.1% so far this year, with dividends reinvested, following its 18% decline in 2022. But this is a tech-led rally reversing last year’s pain. The S&P 500 SPX, -0.38% is heavily…
[]The Turkish lira sank to new lows against the U.S. dollar on Wednesday, as concerns mounted over challenges facing the country’s new finance minister, and after a report that state lenders have stopped selling dollars to defend the currency. []The dollar USDTRY, +0.26% climbed to 23.133 against the lira, a…
The U.S. trade deficit jumped 23% in April to a six-month high of $74.6 billion, reflecting an increase in imports such as cell phones and foreign autos. Exports fell. The trade gap rose $14 billion from $60.6 billion in March. Larger deficits subtract from gross domestic product, the official scorecard…
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Members of Generation X may be getting close to retirement age, but they’re apparently not giving it too much thought. Only 19% of those in that cohort, who are now about 43 to 58 years old, think they will ever fully retire in the old-fashioned way that involves leaving their…
U.S. stocks opened higher Wednesday, attempting to extend Tuesday’s rally and push the S&P 500 index to a fresh high, after closing at the highest level since last August, with investors weighing the economic outlook, after data shows U.S. trade deficit widened sharply in April. How are stock-index futures trading?…
This year, with my sidekick Michael Wicklein, I took a more-careful-than-usual look at the Trustees Report for the Medicare program. After all, Medicare–like Social Security — relies on payroll tax revenues, so it’s useful to understand the competing needs. Traditional Medicare is composed of two programs. The first — Part…
If you want to understand how community banking works in the U.S., it is important to know something about the Federal Home Loan Bank system. The FHLBs have gotten more publicity than usual this year because of the roles two of them played in providing short-term financing to four troubled…
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“The demographic clock is ticking for the West.” China announced earlier this year that for the first time since the 1960s, deaths outnumbered births and its population slipped in 2022 by 850,000 to 1.41 billion. COVID-19 brought this event forward a few years. More fundamentally, the legacy of China’s now-abandoned one-child policy and…