The three major U.S. stock indexes rallied Thursday and Friday to overcome Wednesday’s rout that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 1,000 points to mark its worst day in 15 months.
Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT – Aug 4 2026
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U.S. REGULATORS SEE DANGERS IN PRIVATE EQUITY’S CIRCULAR DEALS
U.S. regulators are alarmed by what they call “circular ownership” and a lack of transparency in financial structures increasingly used by private equity firms such as Apollo Global Management and KKR.
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DIVIDED FED COMMITTEE LEAVES INTEREST RATES UNTOUCHED
On 29 July, the Federal Reserve’s rate-setting Open Market Committee decided by a vote of 9 to 3 not to raise interest rates although inflation pressures from the Iran War persist.
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BIG OIL MAKES BIG PROFITS FROM IRAN WAR
ExxonMobil’s second-quarter profits more than doubled those of a year earlier to $14.5 billion as its 24 refineries around the world ran flat out replacing missing fuel supplies cut off by the Iran War.
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U.S. PUBLIC COMPANIES REPORT HEFTY SECOND-QUARTER PROFITS
Companies listed on the Standard & Poor’s 500 are on track to report second-quarter earnings – net profits after all expenses are paid – 47.4 percent higher than a year earlier, making it the most robust quarter in five years, data service FactSet reported.
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AI’S RISING DEBT LEVEL IS CREATING A “CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE”
The debt load taken on by AI hyperscalers is becoming increasingly risky, according to something called the Altman Z-Score, a key measure of risk associated with corporate debt.
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MORTGAGE RATES HIGHEST IN A YEAR
During the week of 31 July, the U.S. national average mortgage interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate loan rose to 6.66 percent from 6.58 percent the week before, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. reported.
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U.S. GOVERNMENT BORROWING COST IS HIGHEST SINCE 2007
On 30 July, the interest rate the U.S. government paid on its 30-year bond edged up 0.14 of a percentage point to about 5.25 percent, its highest in 19 years.
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A KEY MEASURE OF CONSUMER CONFIDENCE DECLINED IN JULY
American consumers were less confident about current economic conditions in July than they were in June, according to the latest monthly survey from The Conference Board.
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U.S. OIL AND GASOLINE RESERVES ARE “PRECARIOUSLY LOW”
Commercial crude oil reserves dropped by 7.2 million barrels during the week ending 24 July and last month the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) went down another 3.8 million barrels as U.S. refineries continued running at between 97 and 100 percent of capacity.