US Federal Reserve

As we’ve noted time and time again, the number of Americans scraping by with almost no money in their savings account (if they even have a savings account) is staggeringly high - and growing.

As the Motley Fool pointed out in a recent post, the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the personal saving rate in June 2017 was a measly 3.8%, or $3.80 for every $100 they earn. With the median household income in the US at just north of $50,000, that would amount to about $4,000 a year.  

JP Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon’s declaration that he would fire any JPM traders whom he knew were trading bitcoin unexpectedly ranked among the most popular stories on several respected financial media websites – despite stiff competition from Apple Inc.’s 10th anniversary product launch.

It's been a bad year for inflation forecasters: every month this year, economist consensus has expected core CPI to rise by 0.2% and every month since March, that figure has proven to be too high, resulting in 5 consecutive inflation misses and the weakest stretch of core inflation growth since 2010.

Via StockBoardAsset.com,

America’s opioid crisis is accelerating and could kill nearly ‘half a million people’ over the next decade.

The epidemic is now killing 100 people every day, fueling a public-health crisis draining the resources of the economy. Overdoes and deaths have been on the rise for decades, but in most recent times American’s prime working age males (25-54) have been ravaged by the crisis. This is a cause for concern…

Eurodollar options traders are abandoning positions targeting another Fed rate increase this year, as the market-implied probability of a quarter-point hike in December plunges below 25 percent.

The latest Chicago Mercantile Exchange data, for trading on Thursday, show a sharp drop in open interest for options that are a pillar of a December 2017 eurodollar put-fly position, a trade that hinges on the market pricing in a hike that month.