Financial related news.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer spending slowed in April while inflation was up, but still far below the target set by the Federal Reserve. The Commerce Department said Friday that spending increased 0.3 percent in April following a 1.1 percent surge in March that had been the largest increase in nearly a decade. Personal income growth, [...]
NEW YORK (AP) — Did you get a 7 percent raise last year? Congratulations, yours was in line with what CEOs at the biggest companies got. But for chief executives, that 7 percent was roughly $800,000. Pay for CEOs at S&P 500 companies rose to a median of $12 million last year, including salary, stock [...]
MOSBY, Mo. — The residents of this small riverside town have become accustomed to watching floods swamp their streets, transform their homes into islands and ruin their floors and furniture. Elmer Sullivan has replaced his couch, bed and television. He’s torn up water-buckled floorboards. And he put a picket fence against the front of his [...]
NEW YORK — Behold the power of low expectations. Nearly all the companies in the S&P 500 have said how much profit they made in the first three months of the year, and growth looks to be close to nil. That’s usually a frightening thing for investors because stock prices tend to follow the path [...]
NEW YORK — With 2019 more than one-third over, small business owners without employee retirement plans may want to consider starting one before more time passes. Businesses get tax deductions for the contributions they make to employee plans, and contributions can be as high as $56,000 per employee for 2019. Plans vary in terms of [...]
NEW YORK (AP) — It’s not just big oil and power companies that investors are pushing to do better on the environment. In the next few weeks, Amazon shareholders will vote on a proposal made by one of their own to push the company to describe how it’s curbing its use of fossil fuels. In [...]
Retirement experts frequently recommend working longer if you haven’t saved enough. But you may not realize just how powerful a little extra work can be. Researchers who compared the relative returns of working longer versus saving more last year reached some startling findings. Among them: • Working three to six months longer was the equivalent [...]
NEW YORK (AP) — Last year’s tumble for the stock market wasn’t enough to scare workers off of saving for retirement. Instead, many ended up saving more. Even after a nearly 20 percent plunge for the S&P 500 rattled nerves at the close of 2018, workers upped their contributions into 401(k) accounts in the ensuing [...]
NEW YORK — The stock market keeps going higher, but fees to own funds keep going lower. Investors paid less to own funds last year than ever before: about $48 in expenses for every $10,000 invested, according to a study by fund tracker Morningstar. That’s roughly half of what investors paid in 2000, when expenses [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve this week will likely reinforce a theme that has cheered consumers and investors since the start of the year: No interest rates hikes are likely anytime soon. The prospect of continued low rates is keeping borrowing costs low for households and companies. It is helping drive record highs in [...]