Inflation is never a feel-good story. Nothing feels good about items getting more expensive, no matter how inconsequential price hikes were for decades prior to 2022. Gas prices have long been the biggest factor determining whether consumers were confident and happy or nervous and displeased. Elections turn on inflation numbers. “It’s the economy, stupid,” was …
Investors are struggling to put their finger on what has changed about the stock market of late. Yes, there’s war, the highest inflation we’ve seen in 40 years, the persistent promise/threat that interest rates are rising and more. Those economic and geopolitical events have driven the market down by more than 10 percent this year, …
The talking head on my local morning news show was gabbing about how “Inflation is everywhere right now. It’s unavoidable.” He and his co-hosts complained about prices for steak and gasoline, the reduced size of standard packages of bacon that are hiding price increases, and more. It was standard chatter about inflation these days, it …
If you spent December reading or listening to the financial experts making forecasts for the year ahead, you could draw five conclusions about what to expect in 2022. We’ll see heightened inflation, higher interest rates, increased volatility, slower growth and lower investment returns. The specific predictions weren’t uniform or in complete agreement – it’s hard …
Most people can remember exactly where they were when the stock market suffered its biggest one-day point decline ever. That’s not because the day was particularly memorable but more because it happened about a year ago, on March 16, 2020, early in the coronavirus pandemic when almost everyone had shut things down at home. Were …
In the alphabet soup of typical economic recoveries – think V-shaped, or W, Z, U and L – the one thing that’s common to the ending is that, for better or worse, everyone comes out together, at the same spot in the curve. The Covid-19 economy, however, is creating a K-shaped recovery, and it’s growing …
Every four years, as the Presidential election winds down, Americans let the rhetoric and the headlines make them gloomy about the post-vote economy. Not surprisingly, this year and this election are different, sort of. For years, Bankrate.com has surveyed Americans about the biggest threats to the U.S. economy over the coming six months, and the …
