While the U.S. may import more manufactured goods than it exports, it runs a large trade surplus in financial services. The overall U.S. trade surplus for financial services in 2024 was about $130 billion.
Google remains the top way travelers prepare for their trips but a growing subset of consumers is turning to artificial intelligence to help them research and plan out their stays. Specifically, they’re experimenting with AI platforms known as large language models, or LLMs, such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Llama.
Some 49 million options contracts changed hands each day in 2024, up from 19 million contracts in 2019. And as the size of the market has grown, individual investors’ slice of it has, too: They made up 29% of all options activity at the end of last year, up from 23% at the beginning of 2020.
In the U.S., the richest 10% have 36.3% of their total assets in stocks and mutual funds, with real-estate comprising 18.7% of their total assets.
In the first quarter of 2025, businesses leased about 115 million square feet of office space, a 13% increase from the fourth quarter of 2024 and the most since the middle of 2019.
The Barclays high-yield bond capitulation signal jumped 34 percentage points since the end of March to 91%, its highest level since October 2023, when Treasury yields surged on inflation fears. When the gauge hits 100%, the market is in full capitulation. That has happened five times this century: during the 2008-09 financial crisis; the 2011 European debt crisis; when oil prices plummeted in 2016; the start of the pandemic in 2020; and when interest rates surged in 2022.
Americans have amassed $35 trillion of wealth in their homes. Home equity has climbed nearly 80% since early 2020—up from $19.5 trillion—thanks to a turbocharged rise in house prices. That was about twice the rise in financial wealth including stocks and bonds as of the end of 2024.