Money & The Economy

Stock market index futures initially dropped in early Friday trading after President Donald Trump issued another threat to China over its unfair trade practices. The markets initially reacted to the president’s comments in a CNBC interview that aired Friday morning. Trump said he’s “ready to go” on tariffs against all Chinese imports worth over $500 billion. Dow futures dropped to ...

At a time where everything seems to be going up and making us pay more and more, there comes State Farm dropping those rates by 3%. This is big, considering that they are the largest auto insurer in Texas, and a cheap auto insurance Texas is not that easily found. This change is expected to save the average customer around ...

Halfway through 2018, prices are at record highs, inventory is at record lows and home sales are trailing 2017’s pace, according to the RE/MAX National Housing Report. June sales were 5.5% lower than June 2017 in the 54 metro areas surveyed, marking the seventh consecutive month of year-over-year declines. Headed in the opposite direction, the June Median Sales Price of $258,500 was an all-time high ...

Here’s a picture for you: you’re sitting in front of your new Mercedes, staring at a broken windscreen that seems to have appeared there overnight. Was it there before? Did someone threw a rock at it while you left it parked there? It doesn’t really matter anymore; all you know is that it’s going to cost you a fair amount ...

Consumers and the Federal Government continue to increase debt due to spending according to a new report out Wednesday. Revolving debt, almost all of which is consumer credit card debt, increased by more than $16 billion in May, according to Lending Tree’s Consumer Debt Outlook for July 2018. That’s the largest-ever increase in revolving credit for that calendar month and the largest percentage increase ...

The distilled spirits industry saw its 20th consecutive year of volume growth, rising 2.1% in 2017 to 227.7 million nine-liter cases. According to the Beverage Information Group’s 2018 Liquor Handbook, consumers are spending more and drinking more—an increase of 6.7 million cases over the previous year. The ongoing interest in high-end and super-premium products across the spirits segments, combined with continued confidence in the ...

Global defense subsector grew by 3.9 percent to $361.5 billion in 2017 with military spending continuing to rise across the globe U.S. A&D industry revenue growth reverses two-year trend — U.S. marginally outperformed European counterparts with a 3.4 percent year-on-year growth Global aerospace and defense (A&D) sector revenues grew by 2.7 percent to reach US$685.6 billion in 2017, according to the 2018 Global ...

Can we be honest for a moment? If someone asked you to name a consistently honest, trustworthy, reliable business, “junkyard” probably wouldn’t be the first thing to come out of your mouth. Indeed, trying to sell your junk car to a local junkyard can be incredibly stressful and problematic. There are a handful of common scams that junkyards will try ...

The years of 2016 and 2017 meant loans worth £37bn for UK households, as shown by the UK Finance’s published data. This also means a growth of four times faster than the wages – which means that loans now stand at an outstanding value. While the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has stated that most of the loans involved people that ...

Personal loans are United States’ fastest-growing consumer-lending category, as they have reached a new record this year. Data from TransUnion credit bureau shows a significant rise of about 18%, this only during the first four months of the year, reaching the sum of $120 billion. The data also shows that Fintech companies represent 36% of total personal loans, in the ...

As FitSmallBusiness.com, the digital business publication, established in a recent study, it’s all about the gig economy now.  Freelancers contribute nearly $1.4 trillion every year to the national economy, and it’s projected that nearly 43 percent of the U.S. workforce will be represented by gig economy jobs in the year 2020 – proving that “gig” is not only here to stay, it will continue ...

According to Experian, a consumer credit reporting agency, the first part of 2018 is marked by a record sum for the average monthly loan payment for a new vehicle. This increase, that has reached the sum of $523, is a result of the rise in interest rates. Besides the new standard for the average monthly loan payment for a new ...

The unemployment rate for Hispanic workers reached a record low for the month of June according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report released Friday. In June, the unemployment rate for Hispanic or Latino workers fell to 4.6 percent for the month. This comes in just lower than the previous record of 4.8 percent.  That record was set ...

The two main messages from today’s jobs report are that both employment and the labor force are still continuing to grow rapidly even though a low unemployment rate means fewer workers are on the sidelines than before. The US labor market added 213,000 jobs in June and the figures for May and April were both revised up. It is now ...

Private sector employment increased by 177,000 jobs from May to June according to the June ADP National Employment Report®.  Broadly distributed to the public each month, free of charge, the ADP National Employment Report is produced by the ADP Research Institute® in collaboration with Moody’s Analytics.  The report, which is derived from ADP’s actual payroll data, measures the change in total nonfarm private employment ...