Americans’ inflation-adjusted median household income fell to $74,580 in 2022, declining 2.3% from the 2021 estimate of $76,330. The amount has dropped 4.7% since its peak in 2019.

Overall options activity has smashed records in each of the past three years. About 44 million options contracts have changed hands each day so far this year, on average, an 8% bump from last year and more than double the figure in 2018.

Investors put $33 billion toward U.S.-based venture capital funds in the first half of 2023, less than half the $74 billion in the same period in 2021. Global fundraising for all private funds fell 10% last year to $1.5 trillion.

Money-market yields recently soared to their highest level in 16 years. Similarly, yields on 10-year Treasurys have lurched to the highest since 2007.

The 60-day-plus delinquency rate for subprime auto loans rose to 5.37% in June. That is well above the 0.49% June rate for prime loans in the tracker, and the highest June level ever for subprime.

$100 invested in three-month Treasury bills in 1928 grew to only $2,141 by the end of last year while it became $46,379 invested in medium-grade corporate bonds and a whopping $624,534 if invested in stocks.

Activist hedge funds have seen their investments climb about 14% through July. That trails the S&P 500’s gains of about 20% through the same time period. But it’s better than 2022, when activists as a unit were down more than 16% for the full year.

Hedge-fund firms that have more than $5 billion in assets had net inflows of $14 billion in the first half of this year. Those with between $1 billion and $5 billion had inflows of about $1 billion. Firms managing less than $1 billion, by contrast, had net outflows of some $2 billion.

Private funds’ gross assets recently surpassed those of the commercial banking sector at more than $25 trillion. That is up from $9 trillion in 2012.

The Federal Reserve resumed lifting interest rates with a quarter-percentage-point increase that will bring them to a 22-year high.