Wealth Management News & Insights
Inflation Impact on Taxes, The $30 Million Lottery Scam, TikTok to Monitor Location of American Citizens
Financial Markets
- Fed Is Losing Billions, Wiping Out Profits That Funded Spending: Rapidly mounting red ink at the Federal Reserve and many peers risks becoming more than just an accounting oddity. [Yahoo]
- Oops, We Forgot to Fix the Supply Chain: At first glance, it might look like the pandemic-era supply chain chaos is nearly over. [Vox]
- Day Traders Go Back to Their Day Jobs as Stock Market Swoons: Individual investors are placing fewer trades at Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley and Robinhood. [WSJ]
- Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Pentagon to Deepen Ties Despite Dispute on Starlink Funding in Ukraine: Pentagon units have been signing sole-source contracts for SpaceX’s satellite-internet services. [WSJ]
- Europe Now Has So Much Natural Gas That Prices Just Dipped Below Zero: Europe has more natural gas than it knows what to do with. So much, in fact, that spot prices briefly went negative earlier this week. [CNN]
- Liz Truss Resigns as U.K. Prime Minister After Tax Plan Caused Market Turmoil: Resignation after six weeks is set to make Truss the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. [WSJ]
- Rishi Sunak Wins Vote to Become U.K.’s Next Prime Minister After Liz Truss Resigns: Sunak, the first person of color to become U.K. leader, is expected to calm markets. [WSJ]
Financial Planning
- Hedge Fund Managers Paid for Stockpicking Genius Aren’t Showing Much of It: The traditional strategy of mixing long and short equity bets hasn’t provided the bear market buffer that clients hoped for. [Bloomberg]
- Soaring Inflation Pushes Halloween Candy Prices Scary High: The cost of candy ingredients, such as flour and sugar, has surged more than the overall inflation rate, leaving many customers with sticker shock ahead of Halloween. [WSJ]
- You’re Giving Away Yield and Don’t Even Know It: Money-market funds have been jacking up their fees in recent months, eating into the returns that savers should be earning. Here’s what to do about it. [WSJ]
Tax Planning
- Inflation Adjustments Mean Lower Tax Rates for Some in 2023: Filers whose salaries have not kept pace with inflation could see savings on their federal income tax bills. [NYT]
- Inflation Causes IRS to Raise Tax Brackets, Standard Deduction by 7%: Agency implements adjustments to key tax code parameters for 2023, following formulas set by Congress. [WSJ]
Retirement Planning
- A New Survey Reveals Americans’ Magic Number for Retirement: Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual. [WSJ]
Business Strategy
- Builders Say They’re Ready for This Housing Slowdown. ‘I’ve Learned My Lesson’: Meltdown of 2007-09 fostered less risky tactics; not as much debt. [WSJ]
- Airbnb Hosts Say Bookings ‘Fell Off a Cliff’ Amid Influx of New Vacation Rentals and Rising Prices: ‘We went from 80% [occupancy] to zero,’ one host says in a common refrain among property owners who say they saw a sudden decline in the summer months. [MarketWatch]
Life & Work
- TikTok Parent ByteDance Planned To Use TikTok To Monitor The Physical Location Of Specific American Citizens: The project, assigned to a Beijing-led team, would have involved accessing location data from some U.S. users’ devices without their knowledge or consent. [Forbes]
- The $30 Million Lottery Scam: How a Michigan real-estate broker became convinced he had cracked the lottery—and how he tricked his investors into financing his scheme. [The Atlantic]
- First Global Tsunami Simulation of the Chicxulub Asteroid Impact 66 Million Years Ago: The 6+ miles-wide asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago wiping out nearly all the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the planet’s plant and animal species also triggered a megatsunami with mile-high waves that new research confirms its global impact. [PMEL]