10 year yield The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield rose Wednesday 27th September 2023, to its highest level in more than 15 years, as traders navigated fears of persistent inflation and higher interest rates for longer than expected. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 4.612%. It had reached 4.566% on Tuesday 26th September 2023,Read More →
Credit card losses in the U.S. are rising at the fastest pace since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. Goldman Sachs reportedly predicts that credit card losses will continue to climb through the end of 2024 or early 2025 for most issuers. This is unusual because the losses are accelerating outsideRead More →
Fed holds steady The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady in a decision released Wednesday 20th September 2023, while also indicating it still expects one more hike before the end of the year and fewer cuts than previously indicated next year. That final increase, if realised, would be it forRead More →
Charged for unwanted items in Fortnite? V-Bucks are the in-game currency of Fortnite, they can be used to buy virtual items such as skins and loot. However, some players have complained that they were charged for unwanted items and that their children made purchases without their knowledge. As a result,Read More →
Venture firms take a hit Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, two of Silicon Valley’s most high-profile venture firms, are poised to take a massive hit on their investments in grocery delivery company Instacart, a deal that closed in 2021 as tech stocks were soaring. In its latest IPO prospectus update,Read More →
Latest U.S. inflation figures The latest inflation figures for the U.S. show that the annual inflation rate rose to 3.7% in August 2021, up from 3.2% in July 2021. This was mainly driven by a sharp increase in energy prices, which jumped up 10.5% over the last month. Gas (petrol) prices accounted for more than half ofRead More →
With second-quarter earnings season now largely behind the U.S. market, stock investors have been focusing on the latest economic data and for the most part been reacting positively to bad economic news, or any data that may point to an economic slowdown. It’s been almost nine months since the trendRead More →
‘Is this the end of the line’? Yet more strike action continues to create chaos for travellers Much of the UK will have no train services on Friday 1st Septemebr 2023 as the latest major strike action takes place. Members of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, who work at moreRead More →
At 4.33%, the 10-year Treasury yield in the U.S. is at its highest in 16 years. That represents a risk-free, long-duration asset with relatively high returns and this is challenging the stock market. Why should traders invest in stocks that may not return as much, or just slightly more andRead More →
The latest U.S. mortgage rates are the highest they have been in decades. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 7.23% in the week ending 25th August 2023, up from 7.09% the week before, according to latest bank reports from U.S. This is the highest level since June 2001, when it wasRead More →
Bitcoin fell sharply on Thursday 17th August by 9% to just over $26,000 The fall in Bitcoin followed several hours after reports emerged that SpaceX, one of Elon Musk’s enterprises, wrote down the value of its Bitcoin holdings by a total of $373 million in 2022 and 2021, and that theRead More →
Up slightly for the first time in a year U.S. consumer prices rose a mild 0.2% in July, but the rate of inflation rose for the first time in more than in a year in a sign it’s going to take a while to get the cost of living fullyRead More →
Problem? Americans are using their credit cards more than ever, pushing the total balance to over $1 trillion for the first time in history, according to a report from the New York Federal Reserve. The report, released August 2023, showed that credit card balances rose by $45 billion to $1.03Read More →
SEC Ruling – July 2023 XRP, the native token of the blockchain company Ripple, soared more than 60% on Thursday after a U.S. judge delivered a major victory to the firm in its legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC had sued Ripple in December 2020,Read More →
Cryptocurrency Crypto, short for cryptocurrency, is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security and operates independently of a central bank. Cryptocurrencies are decentralised currencies, meaning they’re neither issued nor governed by a central bank. Some cryptocurrencies are issued by their developers, while others are generated by their respectiveRead More →