Author: Money Mechanics

The majority of would-be homebuyers expect mortgage rates to continue their recent decline, and it’s one of the main reasons why they’re waiting to make a purchase, according to the findings of a new CNBC Housing Market Survey.Rates have been creeping down over the last few months and are hovering around the lowest level in a year, with the average rate on the popular 30-year fixed loan now sitting at 6.17%, according to Mortgage News Daily. But nearly three-quarters of real estate agents surveyed by CNBC said most of their buyers think rates will come down further.”My biggest challenge is…

ZDNET’s key takeaways The latest smart glasses are available for $379 in various styles and lens options. They feature 3K video recording and longer battery life. It’s the same design as the first-gen, with the same arsenal of Meta AI tools. more buying choices Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.Recently, I’ve been documenting more of my life with the Meta Ray-Bans than with my phone. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m not shoving a camera in front of friends and family, or perhaps they’re not catching the pulsing white indicator whenever I hit the record button on the…

(Oil Price)– The supertanker freight futures surged on Thursday and Friday after the U.S. sanctions against Russia’s biggest oil firms created a rush to replace Russian barrels. The front-month supertanker contracts on the route Middle East to China, the benchmark route, jumped by 16% on Thursday, to the highest level in nearly two years, according to data from the Baltic Exchange data cited by Bloomberg. “We anticipate the rush for replacement crudes will be larger and more sustained because of the exhaustive list of Russian producers under OFAC sanctions,” Anoop Singh, global head of shipping research at Oil Brokerage, told Bloomberg.…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer chaired a panel reviewing post-18 education and funding for the May governmentAn English education was once globally renowned — albeit more for elite high flyers than for other people. Our current system, while containing world-class universities, has long failed those who do not take the academic route. Now, and at last, a government has laid out a plan to put this right — improving the existing system without needlessly ripping up the work of prior administrations. This is how government is…

Only the wealthy will benefit from ZIRP, and the benefits of “the wealth effect” and “trickle down” have not just diminished–they’re now negative. Welcome to the era of ZAP. A correspondent suggested I consider the possibility that the powers that be will respond to a weakening of the economy by pushing toward zero, reinstating ZIRP–Zero Interest Rate Policy. The purpose of ZIRP is to reduce the costs of borrowing money as the means of goosing borrowing-and-spending and inflating another credit-asset bubble, a.k.a. “the wealth effect,” the Federal Reserve’s tried-and-true means of goosing the spending of the top 10% by making…

We need to consider those factors as we look at last week’s data. Pending home sales did rebound last week, but not to the exact level that the data seems to show. The same holds true for our new listings data and inventory data. Let’s take a look. Weekly pending sales Last week’s existing home sales report showed another year-over-year increase in demand, up 4.1%.This is something I talked about many months ago: if the sales trend stays flat around 4 million — given the low bar in 2025 — we should see growth for many months. The months of…

Apple Maps users could start seeing ads in the app as soon as next year, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Similar to Google Maps and other mapping apps, Apple’s plan is to allow restaurants and other businesses with brick-and-mortar locations to pay to promote themselves in search results, Gurman says. While Apple already runs ads in the App Store, this could be part of a larger strategy to introduce more advertising in iOS. Apple will reportedly try to distinguish itself from the competition with a better interface, and by using AI to show relevant results.  The…

You may not have all the money you want, or even need, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change that with the right adjustments to your spending habits and a few tweaks to your financial plan. However, if you’re like many others, you may not be getting rich because you’re not focusing on the right moves to build wealth. Find Out: If Mark Zuckerberg’s Wealth Were Evenly Distributed Across America, How Much Money Would Every Person Get? Up Next: 6 Popular SUVs That Aren’t Worth the Cost — and 6 Affordable Alternatives Here are three things you must stop doing…

Oil prices surged on Friday as traders reacted to sweeping new U.S. sanctions on Russia’s energy sector that reignited supply fears and fueled one of the strongest weekly rallies since July. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 0.37% to $62.02, while crude gained 0.65% to $66.42, extending a powerful rebound that lifted both benchmarks more than 7% for the week. The OPEC basket also jumped 6.14% to $67.25, reflecting tightening fundamentals across the market. The renewed sanctions, announced by the U.S. Treasury Department, target major Russian producers including , , and tanker group Sovcomflot, effectively cutting off nearly 4.5…

By David Enna, Tipswatch.com A helpful reader alerted me last week that TreasuryDirect was asking investors to clear out their Zero-Interest Certificates of Indebtedness (C of I) holdings. Based on the wording of the email, I’d call it a “warning,” a little more urgent than the “please pay attention” message sent earlier in October about delivering all sets of gift-box I Bonds. Read about the gift-box messaging here: “TreasuryDirect email is an omen of coming changes.” What is a C of I? Basically, it is a lousy deal and probably a throw-back to days when investors didn’t have low-cost brokerage accounts…