Ninety-five percent of people surveyed want flexible hours with 78% of workers wanting location flexibility.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq shed 1.15% and finished the day 10.5% below its all-time closing high from last November. A decline of greater than 10% is considered a correction for a stock index.

Federal receipts in the first fiscal quarter, October to December, increased by a remarkable 31%. That’s a cool $248 billion increase to $1.05 trillion for the quarter. Individual income taxes revenue soared by 55% in the quarter, or $189 billion, to $536 billion. Corporate income taxes rose 44%, or $30 billion, to $99 billion.

Of the 335 equity ETFs launched in 2021, the average number of holdings was just 156 positions, down from an average of 450 in 2009. This may indicate a shift to less widely-held, concentrated ETFs, compared with more diversified, core ETFs that typically hold a large number of positions.

Hedge funds betting on and against stocks, gained an average of 11.9% in 2021. That compares with the S&P 500’s total return of 28.7% and the Nasdaq Composite’s total return of 22.2%.

The Labor Department’s consumer-price index rose 7.1% in December from the same month a year earlier, up from 6.8% in November. That would mark the fastest pace since 1982 and the third straight month in which inflation exceeded 6%.

The U.S. is planning to hand out $10 billion to help upstart companies gain access to capital in a bid to rev up business in disadvantaged communities and spur a broader economic recovery from the pandemic. The State Small Business Credit Initiative will direct money to states, territories and tribal governments for programs that provide venture capital or encourage private lenders to issue loans to small firms. The program revives a policy put into place following the 2007-2009 recession, when banks cut back on lending to small firms and is more than six times as large the cost of the earlier program.

U.S. pension funds’ private-equity investments swelled to an average 8.9% of holdings in 2021 after three years of straight growth. That amounts to roughly $480 billion of state and local pension fund assets tracked by the Federal Reserve, up from about $300 billion in 2018.

Federal Reserve officials discussed a faster timetable for raising interest rates, December meeting minutes show, signaling greater discomfort with inflation.

While some investors expect that inflation, which reached a 39-year high in November, has peaked, others are worried that Omicron could prolong supply-chain disruptions, adding further pressure to prices.