Category: United States

When she was confirmed by the Senate in a close 2022 vote to fill an unexpired term, Fed governor Lisa Cook became the first Black woman to have a seat at the table of the U.S. central bank since it was founded in 1913.  Several months later, in 2023, lawmakers made Cook’s spot more permanent […]

Dear Quentin, I have been with my wife since 1993. We lived together for a few years and, in 2004, we finally married. We are both in our 60s. When my wife retired, her company offered a one-time payout of approximately $ 1 million, which our financial adviser put in her name in IRAs. We […]

See ya, Sunbelt. The best place to retire is now Harrisburg, Pa. That’s according to the latest ranking by U.S. News & World Report, which extolled seven Pennsylvania cities as top 10 retirement destinations. Daytona Beach, Fla., was the only southern town to make the top 10, coming in at the No. 8 spot.  Harrisburg […]

In the eyes of many, New York City may be the place to spend the Thanksgiving holiday, particularly because it’s home to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. But a new report from the personal-finance website WalletHub ranks San Francisco as the top U.S. spot to celebrate Turkey Day. New York didn’t even crack the top […]

Dear MarketWatch,  We are both 70. We retired at age 62, but my husband immediately went back to work with two part-time jobs. He constantly worries about money. We own a home worth $ 550,000 and still owe $ 128,000 on it. We have a 2.2% interest rate. My husband says it makes no sense […]

If you’re brimming with Medicare open-enrollment questions and trying to figure out which plan you should choose before the Dec. 7 deadline, should you worry that you’re overthinking things and just let it go?  “Absolutely not,” Dr. Meena Seshamani, the deputy administrator and director of the Center for Medicare, said in an episode of the […]

A telltale recession signal on Wall Street hasn’t been this jumpy since the Volcker era some 40 years ago. Paul Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987, relied on interest-rate hikes four decades ago to tame high inflation, a similar challenge faced by today’s Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The U.S. government in […]

Dear Big Move, I own a home in Colorado where I always planned on retiring, but now I am not moving back. I bought it for $ 200,000 and it was, at the height of the market, estimated at $ 620,000. It has been a rental since 2004 when I was deployed, then transferred.  The […]

Dear MarketWatch,  My brother, 60, is self-employed and has been for over 30 years. He recently developed a severe medical problem that will shorten his life. Because he has been so ill, his revenue has dropped considerably. He will never be able to work like he used to. He applied for Social Security disability benefits. […]

Here we go again.  Wall Street is once again pushing the feel-good theory that there is a giant wave of money just waiting to come into the stock market and drive stock prices higher. MarketWatch’s Barbara Kollmeyer reports the latest sales patter from a big Wall Street honcho fest in Hong Kong. “There’s about $ […]

“In-favor stocks tend to fall out of favor, and vice versa.” Stocks’ yearly performance rankings are a field day for contrarians: One year’s worst often are the subsequent year’s best, and vice versa. Consider Nvidia NVDA, +2.95%, which is by far the best-performing stock this year among those in the S&P 500 SPX — up […]

Moody’s Investors Service late Friday cut its outlook on the U.S. sovereign credit rating to negative from stable, citing higher interest rates and doubts about the government’s ability implement effective fiscal policies. A negative outlook means that a rating may be cut in the future, but doesn’t mean that it will be. Moody’s continues to […]

Barry Williams may be more than 50 years his youngest competitor’s senior on “Dancing With the Stars,” but he puts time, dedication and energy into his performances week after week — and they’re paying off.  Next week will be the season’s eighth episode, and Williams, known for his role as Greg Brady on “The Brady […]

Quarterly results from the U.S.’s largest cannabis company, Curaleaf Holdings Inc., and from Canada’s Canopy Growth Corp. missed analyst estimates, while shares of Trulieve Cannabis Corp., Green Thumb Industries Inc. and Ascend Wellness rose after beating forecasts. Curaleaf CURLF, +1.97% said its third-quarter net loss widened to $ 92.23 million, or 13 cents a share, […]

The tainted eye drops that the Food and Drug Administration recently warned people to stop using ASAP have reportedly been traced back to a factory in India.  The more than two dozen affected eye-drop brands sold by retailers like Walmart, CVS, Target and Rite Aid were made by Kilitch Healthcare India Ltd. in Navi Mumbai, […]

An earlier version said the U.S. bond market will be closed Friday. It will be open. There are plenty of closures to be aware of this Veterans Day. But when is the holiday being observed, exactly?  It’s a question spurring plenty of Google searches this week. Nov. 11 marks Veterans Day, a federal holiday in […]

U.S. stock futures struggled Friday, in the aftermath of a poor bond auction and fresh signs that interest rates may stay higher for longer that halted winning streaks for major indexes. How stock-index futures are trading S&P 500 futures ES00, -0.01% slipped 1.5 points to 4,360.75 Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YM00, +0.15% rose 29 […]

Meta Platforms Inc. has a preliminary deal to sell a new, lower-cost version of its virtual-reality headset in China, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday night, giving the tech giant access to Chinese consumers for the first time in more than a decade. The Journal reported Tencent Holdings Ltd. will make Meta’s new headset and […]

The U.S. arm of the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China was hit by a ransomware attack, reportedly causing disruptions to the U.S. Treasury market. ICBC 1398, -0.81%, the world’s largest bank by assets, announced Thursday that U.S.-based ICBC Financial Services “experienced a ransomware attack that resulted in disruption” to certain internal systems on Wednesday. […]

Jim Whitehurst, the recently named interim chief executive of Unity Software, has a brief window of time to restore trust between the troubled gaming development company, its investors and developers. And he knows it. In a brief Zoom call with analysts after Unity’s U, -3.15% disappointing third-quarter results Wednesday — in which the company offered […]