Author: News Room

New York City’s real estate market reacted strongly to the economic uncertainty of 2023’s first quarter. Many buyers throughout our market put their plans on hold in the wake of the 50 basis point increase in the Fed rate during the month of December (which followed several 75 basis point increases). Mortgage rates continued to rise, the stock market fell, and transaction volume, which had been slipping throughout the second half of 2022, remained weak in January. Surprisingly, it then began to strengthen in February, and improved even more in March. That said, the deals which got made correlated strongly…

In the April 2018 AAII Journal, there was an article by Meir Statman entitled “Are You Spending Too Little in Retirement?” in which Statman describes clients who continue their thrifty ways into their later years. I’ve already critiqued some of his views in “Dying Young Is Not A Retirement Plan” and “Your Children Are Not Entitled To Your Retirement Savings.” In the first article in this series, I rebuked Statman’s suggestion that you can cut loose on your spending because you likely won’t live as long as you think. In the second article, I addressed Statman’s irresponsible exaltation of giving…

With the U.S. stock market closed on Good Friday, investors will have the weekend to digest an employment report that moved fed-funds-futures traders to bet on an increased chance of the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates early next month. Friday’s employment report puts a “dent” in the case of investors who were betting that a recession was imminent and the Fed would begin cutting its benchmark rate soon after its May policy meeting, said Sameer Samana, a senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, in a phone interview.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday the U.S. economy…

By Dan Burns and Howard Schneider (Reuters) – The Black unemployment rate hit a record low in March, a milestone for a U.S. labor market that most policymakers and economists expect to begin cooling in the face of higher interest rates, jeopardizing those historic gains. The Black unemployment rate tumbled to 5% last month from 5.7% in February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday, perhaps the most notable data point in a report that at once displayed the resilience of the American job market but also the early signs of its vulnerability to the higher borrowing costs engineered…

By Peter Nurse Investing.com – The U.S. dollar edged higher in early European trade Thursday with weakening risk sentiment benefiting this safe haven, but remains near two-month lows as a cooling economy points to a pause in the U.S. Federal Reserve rate-hiking cycle. At 03:55 ET (07:55 GMT), the , which tracks the greenback against a basket of six other currencies, traded 0.1% higher to 101.625, just above the two-month low of 101.140 seen during the previous session. Economic data coming out of the U.S. has pointed to slowing economic growth, with the expanding at a more measured rate in…

By Libby George LONDON (Reuters) – Up to $520 billion in debt needs to be written off to help developing nations at greatest risk of default return to a sounder fiscal footing and meet climate and development goals, according to a Boston University report released on Thursday. The haircuts on debt owed to public and private creditors by 61 of the nations that are already in or are at most risk of debt distress are essential to avoid “cascading defaults,” according to calculations from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center and the Debt Relief for a Green and Inclusive Recovery…

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Harvey Weinstein departs New York Criminal Court following another day of jury deliberations in his sexual assault trial in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., February 21, 2020. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) -A former model has filed a lawsuit claiming a one-time executive at movie studio Miramax raped her after luring her to a hotel with the promise of a meeting with the company’s then-Chief Executive Harvey Weinstein. The lawsuit was filed in New York state court on Thursday by Sara Ziff, who says the alleged assault by Fabrizio…

Soon after March’s sudden bank failures startled markets, April kicked off with surprise oil-production cuts that left investors worried about potential ripple effects on still high inflation. Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s chief investment officer of global fixed income and head of the firm’s global allocation investment team, said in a phone interview that when he saw news of the unexpected oil-production cuts by OPEC+, his first thought was, “here’s another log on the fire,” when it’s already “so hard” to bring down inflation. Crude prices CL00, -0.19% CL.1, -0.19% in the U.S. jumped Monday after OPEC+, a group of oil-producing countries including…

Mortgage rates are at the lowest level in two months, but consumers still think it’s a bad time to buy a home, according to a new report. Fannie Mae’s FNMA, -0.41% Home Purchase Sentiment Index, released Friday, fell by 3.3 points in March to 61.3, which is only slightly above an all-time low set late last year. “With the spring homebuying season now upon us, a large majority of consumers continue to believe that it’s a bad time to buy a home,” Mark Palim, vice president and deputy chief economist at Fannie Mae, said in a statement. “Homeowners sharing this…

The Federal Reserve soon plans to roll out its FedNow offering, a real-time payments service that will provide another option for instant payments in the U.S. The service, which is scheduled to launch in July, will let money “be transferred from the account of a sender to the account of a receiver in near real-time and at any time, any day of the year,” the Fed says on its website. See more: Fed says its instant-payments service FedNow will launch in July While the U.S. already has a real-time payment option that’s run by the Clearing House, a bank-owned association,…