The Federal Reserve’s decision Wednesday to hold interest rates steady means investors still get to enjoy attractive yields on their cash. Cold, hard cash has also proven to be a good diversifier for portfolios in recent years — even better than Treasurys, according to a recent Morningstar analysis . The financial services firm looked at the trailing three-year period through the end of December 2024 and put cash’s performance alongside bonds. “While both stock and bond prices stabilized in 2023 and 2024 after the painful drawdown in 2022, three-year correlations between stocks and high-quality bonds remain elevated. Treasury bonds, historically…
Author: usaeverydaylife
Judge Jefferson Griffin, the Republican candidate for the N.C. Supreme Court listens to testimony in Wake County Superior Court on Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Griffin trails North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes following two recounts of the November 2024 election results. Robert Willett | Raleigh News & Observer | Tribune News Service | Getty ImagesThe Republican candidate for North Carolina’s state Supreme Court conceded on Wednesday, ending his six-month long crusade to overturn the election results in the perennial battleground state.”While I do not fully agree with the District Court’s analysis, I…
For two weeks, as India promised a forceful response to a terrorist massacre that it linked to Pakistan, the only real question seemed to be just how hard it would strike.The answer came in the wee hours of Wednesday, as India sent jets soaring through the air to hit several sites in Pakistan, and as the Pakistani military mobilized its own fleet to try to shoot the Indian planes out of the skies.By day’s end, long after the missiles had stopped flying and the killing had come to a close, both sides took stock and found that they had enough…
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve on Wednesday held its key interest rate unchanged as it waits for the Trump administration’s trade policy to take shape and sees its impact on a sputtering economy.In a move that carried little suspense given the wave of uncertainty sweeping the political and economic landscape, the Federal Open Market Committee held its benchmark overnight borrowing rate in a range between 4.25%-4.5%, where it has been since December.The post-meeting statement noted the volatility and how that is factoring into policy decisions.”Uncertainty about the economic outlook has increased further,” the statement said. “The Committee is attentive to…
Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO John Brown joined CNBC’s “Halftime Report” to offer his analysis on several stocks ranging from major tech names to Berkshire Hathaway and Shake Shack . Here’s what he said about each: Alphabet The shares were tanking on Wednesday after Apple’s services chief said AI would replace search engines. Brown said he’s bearish on the Google parent as young people opt for AI platforms now. “For the first time, Google finds itself competing in core search. … Basically, Google could go into any business that they wanted to go into, because they had a money printing machine…
Odds skewed toward another ‘hold’ at next Fed meeting, says Goldman Sachs Asset ManagementThe recent better-than-feared jobs report supports the Federal Reserve’s decision to hold rates steady — and the central bank will likely continue to stay in a holding pattern at its next meeting, said Ashish Shah, chief investment officer of public investing at Goldman Sachs Asset Management.”The onus is on the labor market to weaken sufficiently to bring a resumption of its easing cycle,” Shah said. “Any weakening in the labor market, however, could take a number of months to become apparent and we see the odds skewed…
Maros Sefcovic, European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security; Interinstitutional Relations and Transparency, speaks to reporters in Singapore on May 7, 2025, after signing of the EU-Singapore Digital Trade Agreement (DTA), a landmark initiative enhancing digital economic cooperation between the European Union and Singapore. Roslan Rahman | Afp | Getty ImagesThe European Union’s executive arm will announce further details of its proposed countermeasures to U.S. tariffs in a Thursday update, European Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic said Wednesday.”Tomorrow we will announce next preparatory steps, both in [the] area of possible rebalancing measures and also in the areas important for further discussions,”…
An airport control tower is seen at Newark Liberty International Airport, on May 6, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. Andres Kudacki | Getty ImagesAir traffic controllers have been under strain for years, but a 90-second equipment failure last week exposed how decades of staffing shortages, underinvestment and patchwork solutions for those who guide planes through some of the world’s most congested airspace are taking their toll.The outage also sparked hundreds of flight delays, disrupting travel for thousands of travelers for days — again.What happened?On the afternoon of April 28, air traffic controllers at a facility in Philadelphia who are responsible…
From left, Steven Levy, Wired editor at large, and Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, speak onstage at Wired’s The Big Interview event in San Francisco on Dec. 3, 2024.Kimberly White | Wired | Getty ImagesDesign software startup Figma on Wednesday debuted an artificial intelligence feature to automate the process of building websites and applications.The new feature, called Figma Make, is the company’s response to the rise of “vibe-coding” tools, which turn a short written description into the source code necessary for a website. Google and Microsoft have both touted their own “vibe-coding” tools this year. OpenAI has also…
Humans have visually documented about 1,470 square miles, or a mere 0.001 percent, of the deep seafloor, according to a new study. That’s a little larger than the size of Rhode Island.The report, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, arrives as nations debate whether to pursue industrial mining of the seabed for critical minerals.Some scientists argue that so little is known about the undersea world that more research on the deep seafloor is needed to responsibly move forward with extractive activities.“More information is always beneficial, so we can make more informed and better decisions,” said Katy Croff Bell, a…
