A-rated cities and school districts are paying 3.16% for a one-year loan issued March 3, compared with 0.21% at the beginning of 2022.

Cash and checks are forecast to fall to 14% of total payments this year from 42% in 2010, with the most precipitous drop coming just after the pandemic started in 2020.

Markets are now betting that inflation, as measured by the 12-month change in the consumer-price index, will fall to about 2.8% by October, from 6.4% in January.

The S&P 500 High Dividend Index—made up of the S&P 500’s top 80 dividend-paying companies—fell 1.1% including dividends last year, compared with a negative total return of 18% for the broad benchmark. In 2023, the index is up 2.5% but is trailing the S&P 500’s 4.8% advance.

Venture firms raised $20.6 billion in new funds in the fourth quarter. That was a 65% drop from the year-earlier quarter and the lowest fourth-quarter amount since 2013. The amount was also less than half the level raised in the preceding three months, the first time fundraising volumes decreased from the third to fourth quarter since 2009.

Following the consumer-price print, derivatives markets showed the federal-funds rate peaking at 5.28% in August. Hopes that the Fed would cut rates several times this year faded with the benchmark rate forecast to end the year above 5.12%.

Over the past 96 years, the returns for small-capitalization stocks starting in May of a midterm year through the same October averaged negative 2.3%. The return over the following six months has been positive 19.2%.

The top-earning 10% of men in the U.S. labor market logged 77 fewer work hours in 2022, on average, than those in the same earnings group in 2019. That translates to 1.5 hours less time on the job each workweek, or a 3% reduction in hours. Over the same three-year period, the top-earning 10% of women cut back time at work by 29 hours, which translates to about half an hour less work each week, or a 1% reduction.

Investors have added about $135 billion to global money-market funds over the past four weeks. That is the best stretch since the four-week period ended May 2020, when those funds logged roughly $175 billion in net inflows.

Big banks are teaming up to launch a digital wallet that will allow shoppers to pay at merchants’ online checkout with a wallet that will be linked to their debit and credit cards. The digital wallet will be managed by Early Warning Services, the bank-owned company that operates money-transfer service Zelle will operate separately from Zelle.