During the three months ended in May 2020, the amount of municipal debt sold privately spiked to 13.4%, the highest share in 13 years on record. It has since retreated to about 8%, or around $36 billion—up from 4% in 2012.
As the stock market swoons, individual investors are placing fewer trades, slowing to 2020 volume.
Kroger Co. said it is buying rival Albertsons Cos Inc. in a deal that values the company at $24.6 billion, one of the biggest deals in the history of the grocery industry in the U.S.
The Fed has lifted rates by 0.75 percentage point at each of its past three meetings, bringing its benchmark federal-funds rate to a range between 3% and 3.25% last month—the fastest pace of increases since the 1980s. Officials have indicated they could make a fourth increase of 0.75 point at their Nov. 1-2 meeting and raise the rate above 4.5% early next year.
A U.S. Sentencing Commission report said that guilty pleas by corporations have trended downward in recent decades, reaching 90 in 2021 from a high of 304 in 2000.
With the surge in energy costs and rising interest rates weakening household demand, exports and imports should increase by just 1% in 2023, down from a previous forecast of 3.4%.
A large-scale survey revealed a wide gap between employees’ assessments of their own remote productivity and managers’ perceptions of how much gets done away from the office. Some 87% of the rank and file say they’re just as effective at home, but 80% of bosses disagree.
Yesterday’s blue-chip index’s decline pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average into a bear market – defined in Wall Street parlance as a drop of 20% or more from a recent high.
Ten-year Treasury yields rose to 3.545%, the highest closing level since April 2011.
