After a series of supersize rate hikes in 2022, traders are overwhelmingly betting on a standard quarter-point rise from the Federal Reserve at its first meeting of 2023 following a further slowdown in inflation and remarks by policy makers. Fed-funds futures on Thursday reflected a 93.2% probability the Federal Open Market Committee will raise the benchmark rate by 25 basis

Welcome back! This is Frances Yue, crypto reporter at MarketWatch. I am back from a vacation to the crypto madness, writing this week’s installment from Singapore. Find me on Twitter at @FrancesYue_ or email me at frances.yue@marketwatch.com, if you’d like to share any thoughts on crypto, or this newsletter. U.S. inflation has cooled down in December as expected, while in

A handful of acquisitions this week point to a more deal-friendly year for biopharma and biotech companies, though none has generated the kind of excitement seen in years past.    In a flurry of announcements, AstraZeneca AZN, -0.48% AZN, -1.60% announced plans to buy CinCor Pharma Inc. CINC, +0.96% for about $1.8 billion; Italy’s Chisi Farmaceutici said it is buying Amryt

Natural gas has seen a shaky start to 2023, with U.S. prices falling to their lowest level in more than a year just halfway through the winter season, which is typically a period of high demand for the heating fuel. There is “nothing unusual in U.S. gas demand versus what we have seen in the past few years,” says Saulius Adomaitis, global

Troubled home-goods retailer Bed Bath & Beyond may be heading for a ‘meme squeeze,’ says analyst Ihor Dusaniwsky of S3 Partners. Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. BBBY, +20.87% announced the closure of almost 130 stores on Tuesday as it attempts to resolve its financial woes. The company announced the closures, along with third-quarter results that missed analysts’ top- and bottom-line

One single emergency can derail a retirement, which is why it should take precedence when saving – at least temporarily.  Not everyone has an emergency savings account, or if they do, there isn’t enough to cover one or more challenges. But these accounts can have a huge impact on current and future finances. Savers can use these funds when something

Nursing home operators say they are currently unable to fill 130,000 staff vacancies—a number equivalent to the population of Dayton, Ohio. “This is an unprecedented situation,” says Mark Parkinson, the chief executive of the American Health Care Association/ National Center for Assisted Living. “It’s impossible to exaggerate the challenges faced in providing care, due to the inability to hire workers.” This is, he says,

The XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant has a growth advantage over other circulating subvariants of the virus that causes COVID-19, and early data suggest it also has a greater ability to evade immunity than previous ones, according to the World Health Organization. In its weekly epidemiological update, the agency said the immune-escape data is based on preliminary lab-based studies and not on

Small businesses – and the people they employ – got a boon from new retirement rules that could make it easier and more cost-effective for such companies to offer retirement plans and ultimately help narrow the gap in retirement savings at smaller firms. Roughly 5 million businesses with nearly 57 million employees lack retirement plans at work, according to AARP.

U.S. stocks declined on Thursday after the December consumer-price index showed inflation continued to wane last month, but not by a wide enough margin to change expectations for further Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. How are stocks trading The S&P 500 SPX, +0.10% fell by 28 points, or 0.7%, to 3,941. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.35% shed 173

The numbers: The cost of living fell 0.1% in December and posted the first decline since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, pointing to a further slowdown inflation after it hit a 40-year peak last summer. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a 0.1% drop in the consumer price index. Lower oil prices largely accounted for

In March 2006, about 100 people gathered at a Lake Ozark, Mo., resort to discuss the sale of a student loan organization’s assets.  The board of the state-affiliated Higher Education Loan Authority of Missouri, or MOHELA, had already decided once, a couple of months earlier, to sell $2.4 billion worth of student loans to generate about $450 million for state

It’s CPI day, and hopes are high that the inflation will be further tamed and take rate-hiking pressure off the Fed. Good news on that front could drive the S&P 500 SPX, +1.28% further toward the key psychological level of 4,000 level, say some All that inflation talk brings us to our call of the day from asset manager and

This article is reprinted by permission from NextAvenue.org. Nursing-home reform, long advocated by long-term care analysts and the public, seems to finally be happening. Not a moment too soon. In a 2021 survey by The John A. Hartford Foundation (a funder of Next Avenue), 71% of respondents age 50 and older said they were unwilling to live in a nursing home. The problems

This article is reprinted by permission from NerdWallet.  From repayment policy changes to a sweeping one-time debt forgiveness plan, 2022 proved to be a high-profile year for student loans.  But questions have clouded the student loan announcements, and answers are few and far between. We don’t yet know how, when or if some of these changes will take form.  As

General inflation is easing, but the prices of some food items are not going down anytime soon. And it’s not up to the Fed on this one.  Over the past year, inflation running at nearly 40-year-highs has put a squeeze on American wallets. Through a series of jumbo hikes, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to a range of 4.25%

Dear Quentin, My wife and I have been married for 12 years, and have not started a family yet, with the exception to our two Labradors. We both are in finance, and have several years of technical experience in our professions. We have a $1.3 million dollar real-estate portfolio that has positive cash flow, and have a $125,000 investment portfolio