Dollar Tree agreed to a sale of its Family Dollar business to a consortium of private-equity investors for roughly $1 billion. Dollar Tree outbid its rival Dollar General to acquire the Family Dollar chain in 2015 for roughly $9 billion.

The FOMC voted to hold the federal funds rate at 4.25% to 4.5%. In its quarterly economic projection, the committee lowered its full-year 2025 GDP growth expectation to 1.7%, down from the 2.1% it forecast in December. The current unemployment rate is 4.1%, and the committee expects the median rate to be 4.4% at the end of the year.

Lincoln’s private-markets fund with Bain will invest in a cross section of credit, including loans to companies and loans to finance purchases of assets such as cars and real estate. A portion of the fund will also be invested in more easily traded assets. The vehicle will accept investors of any wealth level and allow them to cash out once a quarter. Lincoln thinks it is the first insurance company to launch private-market funds.

Nasdaq, long associated with its prime Times Square location, will open its first regional headquarters in Dallas. It’s the latest push by a New York institution into Texas, which is trying to unseat the Northeast as the epicenter of U.S. business.

The small-business optimism index fell in February but remained above average. Uncertainty, however, rose to the second-highest level on record.

American consumers’ spending on the luxury market, which includes high-end department stores and online platforms, fell 9.3% in February from a year earlier, worse than the 5.9% decline in January.

As of the fourth quarter of 2024, the average household’s credit-card debt surpassed $10,000, adjusted for inflation, for the first time since 2009.

U.S. employers announced 172,017 layoffs for February, up 245% from January and the highest monthly count since July 2020. More than one-third of the total came from the DOGE effort to reduce the federal headcount.

Some 4.8% of 401(k) account holders took early withdrawals last year for reasons such as preventing foreclosure and paying medical bills. That is a record high, up from a prior record of 3.6% in 2023 and a prepandemic average of about 2%.

The top 10% of earners, households making about $250,000 a year or more, now account for 49.7% of all spending, a record in data going back to 1989. Three decades ago, they accounted for about 36%.