US Stock Insights

Picture a hypothetical 30-year-old saver, call her Saver A, filling in a retirement calculator for the first time. The box says "expected annual return." She has heard one number her whole adult life, so she types 10 and watches a small monthly contribution turn into a seven-figure balance. It feels less like a forecast and more like a promise. The number is not wrong. The average stock market return for the S&P 500, dividends included, was 10.02% a year compounded from 1928 through 2025. What the calculator leaves out is how strange that average is: in 98 calendar years, the index finished within two points of 10% exactly four times. The record below shows what the 10% figure really measures, how wide the range around it has been, and where the most recent decade sits in that range. A 1927 stock certificate from Allentown, Pennsylvania, issued one year before the data series in this article begins (illustration only). Unknown author, Wikimedia Commons , public domain ...

You can deduct stock losses against capital gains without limit, and then up to $3,000 of any remaining net loss against wages and other ordinary income each year ($1,500 if married filing separately). That $3,000 figure took effect in tax year 1978 and has never been adjusted; measured by the Consumer Price Index, it would be about $15,530 in October 2026 dollars. This piece walks through where the number came from, how a large loss is used up year by year, and where the cap's real value sits against its own 48-year history. Sign outside the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington, D.C., February 2025. Photo: G. Edward Johnson, Wikimedia Commons , CC BY 4.0 Key takeaways Net capital losses offset ordinary income only up to $3,000 a year ($1,500 married filing separately); the rest carries forward with no expiration. The $3,000 cap dates to tax year 1978. Adjusted by CPI-U (65.2 then, 337.511 in October 2026), it would be about $15,530 today, so the cap has kept roug...

Yes — by two separate official measures. After-tax corporate profits reached 13.14% of GDP in the second quarter of 2026, the highest reading in the 79-year FRED data series, and a related Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond measure of profits as a share of gross domestic income hit its own record of 13.9% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and held there in the first quarter of 2026. Both measures point the same way: corporate America is keeping a larger slice of the economy's output than at any point since the data begins in 1947. The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. Photo by Jeffrey Zeldman, Wikimedia Commons , licensed under CC BY 2.0 . Key takeaways After-tax corporate profits were 13.14% of GDP in Q2 2026 (BEA data via FRED series CP and GDP) — the highest quarterly reading since the series starts in 1947. A separate Richmond Fed measure, profits as a share of gross domestic income, independently hit a record 13.9% in Q4 2025 and stayed there in Q1 2026. The four othe...

Correction November 11, 2026: The original headline and opening paragraph said that only the mid-2000s pre-crisis years were consistently lower than September 2026's 3.8%. FRED's PSAVERT series shows eight consecutive months from March to October 2022 at 2.4%-3.6%, so the accurate statement is that 3.8% is the lowest reading since October 2022. Also corrected: the 2006-2007 band (1.9%-3.3%, not 1.9%-2.4%), the 1998-2001 range (3.7%-4.8%, which applies to September 1999-December 2000), the count of monthly declines in the past year (six of twelve, not nine) and the recession-pattern claim (two of three episodes, not two of two). Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis Personal Saving Rate (PSAVERT) via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Correction November 12, 2026: The episode table still showed the pre-correction 2006-2007 band of 1.9%-2.4%; it now shows 1.9%-3.3%, matching the text. The 1998-2001 row now states that the 3.7%-4.8% range covers September 1999 through Decembe...

Correction November 11, 2026: Two lines in the Volcker section have been corrected. The 1982 peak of 10.8% was described as the high-water mark for the entire post-World War II era; April 2020’s 14.8% is higher, so the sentence now names both. And the 1982 industry figures were given as “each ended the year above 22%”; the Federal Reserve History essay reports 22% for residential construction and 24% for auto manufacturers. Sources: Federal Reserve History, “Recession of 1981-82”; BLS unemployment rate (UNRATE) via FRED. On September 16, 2026, the Federal Reserve raised its target range for the federal funds rate by a quarter point, to 3.75%-4.00%. It was the Fed's first rate hike in three years, reported across national outlets the same evening. Six weeks later, on October 28, 2026, the Fed held that range steady on a 10-2 vote — and the two dissenters wanted to hike again, not cut. A Fed that reverses from cutting back to hiking, then has policymakers pushing for more, is rare e...

Correction November 10, 2026: the 1% buyback excise tax was described as cutting Q3 2025 operating earnings by "roughly 0.36%–0.41%" and as already reflected in the reported buyback totals. S&P Dow Jones Indices reports 0.36% for operating earnings and 0.41% for As Reported (GAAP) earnings as two separate figures, and the tax reduces earnings rather than the buyback dollars; the buyback-yield passages now state that the 1.4% figure is this article's own calculation rather than a third-party tracker's. Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices, "S&P 500 Q3 2025 Buybacks" press release, December 18, 2025. Berkshire Hathaway told investors on November 7, 2026 that it spent roughly $9.6 billion buying back its own stock in the third quarter, its biggest buyback quarter ever. That announcement landed three weeks after Ned Davis Research reported that net S&P 500 buybacks had slipped back below the $1 trillion mark (on a trailing 12-month basis) for the first...

Data-center and AI-related investment accounted for an estimated 74% of all U.S. GDP growth in the first quarter of 2026, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis's own sub-component data. That is not a typo, and it is not the only time in the last thirty years that one investment cycle has carried the whole economy. Here is how today's AI buildout compares with the late-1990s telecom boom and the mid-2000s housing boom, measured the same way: as a share of GDP. Data center infrastructure in the United States, 2025 map. Source: U.S. Department of Energy / National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a U.S. federal government work in the public domain. Wikimedia Commons file page . Key takeaways The BEA's third estimate of Q1 2026 GDP shows information-processing equipment and intellectual-property investment — the categories that capture AI data-center spending — contributed an estimated 1.55 of the 2.1% annualized growth rate, or roughly 74%. Hyperscaler capita...