Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

The average annual household income Americans would need to feel financially secure is $128,000, according to a new survey of 2,000 adults by Personal Capital and the Harris Poll. That figure is nearly double the median household income of $67,521, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau. Almost half of poll respondents said their debts...

Apple may not have invented the metaverse, but investors are betting that the company’s knack for cashing in on new technologies will make it a major player in the digital universe. Earlier this month, Apple became the first company with a market cap above $3 trillion during intraday trading. The boost came from investors’ confidence...

During this year’s first five trading days, bank stocks jumped 5.4 percent, their best start to a year since 2010, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index retreated 1.9 percent. Share prices of Citizens Financial Group, M&T Bank Corp., and Regions Financial Corp. all shot up about 15 percent on the week. The spike followed...

Last week, investors snapped up shares of funds that buy U.S. loans, expecting to profit when the U.S. Federal Reserve begins raising interest rates this spring, a move that will come sooner than many had expected until recently. The funds collected $1.9 billion in new money last week through 12 January, their largest haul since...

Real bond yields—the return investors make on bonds after inflation takes its cut—have been rising, luring investors away from tech stocks and causing their share prices to slide, analysts told the Financial Times. Share prices for tech stocks not showing a profit are down 7 percent this year; last year’s IPOs are down an average...

More than 36 percent of tech stocks listed on NASDAQ have lost at least half their value compared to their 52-week highs, although the index itself remains just 8 percent below its recent peak, Bloomberg reported. Typically, when the tech-heavy NASDAQ is within 10 percent of its highest recent value, only about 12.5 percent of...

EQUITIES CONTINUE DESCENT INTO 2022 Remember the Santa Clause Rally?  Forget about it. On the stock market front, it has not been a Happy New Year. U.S. equity markets sank last week, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor’s 500 posting their second straight week of losses, the NASDAQ its third. Investors...

The U.S. Congress is considering a fresh plan to channel billions of stimulus dollars to the restaurant industry, including a bipartisan $68-billion proposal drafted last month. Legislators are determining “how much is needed,” according to Maryland senator Ben Cardin, who co-wrote the proposal with colleague Roger Wickler from Missouri. In May 2021, the Biden administration...

Home prices will increase by 14 percent this year through November, online real estate brokerage Zillow predicted. Prices in Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., San Antonio, Tex., and Jacksonville and Tampa, Fla., will rise the most; Tampa leads the surge with prices forecast to grow by 25 percent, Zillow said. Home prices will climb in southern...

After asking rents shot up almost 20 percent last year, and will shot up an additional 7 percent in 2022, according to Realtor.com. Nationally, apartment occupancy was 97.1 percent in December, continuing a relentless demand for flats that has enabled landlords to raise rents dramatically over the last year, as we reported in “Rents Soaring:...