Senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren are pressing financial regulators to strengthen protections for brokerage customers after finding that major firms have widely different safeguards against a type of fraud that can drain investment and retirement accounts. The lawmakers say criminals are exploiting weaknesses in the Automated Customer Account Transfer Service, or ACATS, to move assets from legitimate brokerage accounts into fraudulent accounts opened using stolen personal information. Read the rest

Groupon has brought back their limited-time deal on new Costco Gold Star or Executive Memberships. There are two options. $65 for Gold Star Membership Package 1-year Gold Star Membership (normally $65 by itself) Membership card for the Primary Cardholder and one additional Household Card for anyone living at the same address, over the age of 18. $40 Digital Costco Shop gift card Valid in-store and online. The Digital Costco Shop Card will be emailed within […]

You already said yes to the new sneakers. Then the school supply list showed up, and yes turned into a credit card swipe you hadn’t planned on. You’re not the only one. Back to school debt is climbing fast in 2026, and more parents are financing the season instead of budgeting for it. Here’s what’s driving the increase, and how to cover the costs without carrying a new balance into the holidays. How Much Back […]

4 in 10 physicians already have a side gig, and nearly three-quarters say it’s just as fulfilling as clinical medicine, … Read more

If you’re looking for the cheapest grocery stores in 2026, Costco and BJ’s are among the cheapest overall, according to a Consumer… The post I Compared Grocery Prices Across US: 11 Cheapest Stores Near You appeared first on MoneyPantry.com.

The old quip “Beer money, champagne taste” can be levelled at several acquaintances of mine – not least a good friend who lives in fine style for the present, but reacts like Dracula to sunlight when he hears the word ‘pension’. Jousting over our contrasting lifestyles – “You can’t take it with you!” comes his retort – reminds me of our different visions of what we can do with our money. After all, we will […]

President Donald Trump is moving toward another tariff escalation against China while a separate trade fight with Canada is rapidly intensifying, putting two of the United States’ most important trading relationships under fresh pressure. Trump is considering a new 7.5% tariff on Chinese goods over allegations that Beijing is flooding global markets with underpriced products, according to people familiar with the deliberations. Read the rest

A year ago I wrote the blog post Why I’m Bearish on U.S. Stocks (for the Second Time Since 2017). Since then U.S. stocks are up 16% (total return) and my bearish prediction turned out to be misguided. So where did I go wrong? And how can you prevent yourself from making the same kind of error in the future? This Time is Different (When Overfitting Fails) A year ago I saw a few signs that reminded me of the 2021 market exuberance: Chamath Palihapitiya was filing for a new SPAC Meta was paying $250M+ to hire individual AI researchers The S&P 500’s Price-to-Sales ratio was back near an all-time high As I stated, “It’s not that any one of these things represents a mania, but collectively they do.” While there definitely is some mania around AI, each of the signs I focused on ended up being less significant than I originally believed. First, Chamath launching a new SPAC isn’t a sign of anything. He is going to do what’s in his best interest, regardless of what the rest of the market is doing. If he can find a way to cash in, he will, whether it’s crypto, AI, or something else. Second, Mark Zuckerberg has been known to “overpay” for things today only to look like a genius in hindsight. I remember when he bought Instagram for $1 billion and many thought he was crazy. Looking back now it’s arguably the best acquisition in business history. The fact that he paid a few billion dollars for the world’s best AI researchers is another such bet that I weighed too heavily. This is what Zuck does. We will just have to wait and see if it pays off. Lastly, sometimes your data is wrong. Below is the chart I posted a year ago of the S&P 500’s price-to-sales ratio going back to the 1940s (from DQYDJ.com): As you can see, the P/S metric peaked at 3.41 in 1999. After seeing the run-up in the ratio in 1999, in 2021, and again in 2025, I concluded that we were in bubble territory. Unfortunately, this data series was inaccurate, but I didn’t know it at the time. I’m not sure exactly what changed in how the data was constructed. What I can say is that the revised series matches other sources I’ve cross-checked. If you go to look at the price-to-sales ratio of the S&P 500 today on DQYDJ.com, the 1999 peak is now around 2.09 (instead of 3.41): This chart tells a very different story. When the P/S ratio passed 2.09 (the 1999 level) in 2017, market conditions weren’t anything like those during the DotCom bubble. No one thought there was the same kind of froth in 2017 as in 1999. And the ratio has kept climbing since, to around 3.5 today, without any accompanying DotCom-style implosion. Therefore, the only correct interpretation of the P/S ratio over the last decade is that it doesn’t signal what it used to.