Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

Flush with cash after a strong earnings season and confident in the economy’s upward arc, corporations are preparing to resume buying their own stocks, a project that began in earnest after Republicans passed 2017’s corporate tax cut but were paused during the economic shutdown. U.S. companies across a broad spectrum of industries announced buybacks worth...

Home buyers are no less eager to buy houses but the mortgage industry likely will be less able to accommodate them, analysts say. Mortgage interest rates are creeping up, leaving some prospective buyers now unable to qualify for loans even though they might have earlier this year.  For example, today’s interest rates averaging around 2.97...

Nearly one-quarter of U.S. adults lost ground financially in 2020, the largest proportion since the annual survey began in 2014, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s report, “The Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2020,” released 17 May.  About 45 percent of workers who had been laid off were unable to meet their expenses in...

After increasing 10.7 percent in March from February, retail sales were flat in April, holding March’s gains, although just missing the 0.8-percent nudge that economists had expected but still lofting 43 percent above those in April 2020, according to data firm Affinity Solutions. Sales for the month in bars and restaurants more than doubled over...

Amazon has announced plans to hire another 75,000 workers and will pay $1,000 signing bonuses in some locales. McDonald’s wants 10,000 new wage-earners in its company-owned restaurants and will raise pay by an average of 10 percent for the 36,500 workers already there. Olive Garden also has announced a more generous pay scale.  Applebee’s, IHOP,...

New claims for unemployment benefits fell to 473,000 in the most recent week, sliding from the adjusted 507,000 the week before, the U.S. Labor Department reported. Fewer people are now jobless than at any time since the economic shutdown was imposed last March, the Wall Street Journal noted. The four-week moving average of new jobless...

Investors’ appetite for IPOs, seemingly insatiable earlier this year, has shrunk after the share prices of several newly-public companies quickly sank below their offering price. Honest Co. entered the market at $16, shot up to $23 on its first trading day, but sagged to $14.90 last week before closing 14 May at $15.97. Dating app...

LAST WEEK’S FALL & RISE OF U.S. STOCKS. In the first three days of last week, the stock market suffered its steepest three-day plunge in seven months after a startling inflation report rekindled investors’ fears of runaway prices.  On 12 May, The S&P 500 Index surrendered 681 points, about 1.4 percent of its value, after...

Fox Corp., the media colossus owned by Rupert Murdoch, saw profits rise sevenfold to $567 million in this year’s first quarter, despite a 6.5-percent drop in revenue to $3.2 billion year on year. Ad sales across newspapers, television, radio and online platforms plunged 24 percent to $1.2 billion. Also, fewer viewers tuned in to the...

Private equity firm Apollo Global Management has bought Yahoo and Verizon Communications’ other online media properties for $5 billion.  Verizon shed the assets to concentrate on its central business of telecommunications and continue the expansion of its 5G network, which served 230 million people in 2,700 cities in December, the company said. Apollo plans to...