Finance

US consumers slow spending as inflation bites, Synchrony says

Published

1 year ago

March 25, 2025

US consumers slow spending as inflation bites, Synchrony says

By Nupur Anand

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. consumers are starting to curb their spending in response to high prices and a worsening economic outlook, according to consumer finance company Synchrony Financial (SYF).

Americans have been accumulating more debt amid strain in their finances, with delinquencies edging up for auto loans, credit cards and home credit lines, the Federal Reserve said last month.

Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Patrick Harker has also warned that trouble may be brewing for the U.S. economy, which is showing signs of stress in the consumer sector with consumer confidence also waning.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 13: People walk by a Macy’s store in Brooklyn after the company announced it was closing the store along with over 60 others on January 13, 2025 in New York City. Macy’s, once the nation’s premier department store, has struggled in recent years with the competition from online retailers and discount stores such as Walmart. Macy’s has said that the closures would allow them to prioritize its roughly 350 Macy’s remaining locations. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) · Spencer Platt via Getty Images

The belt-tightening indicates that Americans, whose finances are broadly healthy, are preparing for their finances to be more stretched, said Max Axler, chief credit officer of Synchrony. Most clients are still keeping up their loan repayments, he added.

“Purchase volumes have gone down across the industry as consumers across all income groups become more thoughtful about spending,” Axler told Reuters.

Synchrony, which issues credit cards in partnership with retailers and merchants, has more than 100 million consumer credit accounts.

U.S. consumer sentiment plunged to a nearly 2-1/2-year low in March as inflation expectations soared. Some economists have warned that President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs could boost prices and undercut growth.

Concerns about higher prices have driven consumers’ long-term inflation expectations to levels last seen in early 1993.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 25: A shopper looks at meat products on display at a grocery store on March 25, 2025 in Sydney, Australia. The budget is expected to return to deficit after two years of surplus, focusing on cost-of-living relief measures, including extended electricity rebates and increased healthcare spending, while also addressing economic challenges and potential voter concerns ahead of the upcoming federal election. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images) — SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – MARCH 25: A shopper looks at meat products on display at a grocery store on March 25, 2025 in Sydney, Australia. The budget is expected to return to deficit after two years of surplus, focusing on cost-of-living relief measures, including extended electricity rebates and increased healthcare spending, while also addressing economic challenges and potential voter concerns ahead of the upcoming federal election. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images) · Lisa Maree Williams via Getty Images

Retailers including Target and Walmart have said that shoppers are being careful with their spending, waiting for deals or making tradeoffs to lower-priced items.

Household spending cuts could be a precursor to increasing late credit payments or loan defaults, analysts said. While default rates have remained broadly steady, spending is being watched carefully as an early indicator of deteriorating consumer finances.

Borrowers could also become more cautious, taking out fewer or smaller loans and crimping a key source of revenue for banks. Across the industry, loan growth slowed by 5% to 12% in February versus a year earlier, HSBC analyst Saul Martinez said.

“There is clearly a slowdown, and it shows that the consumer is vulnerable,” Martinez said. “And for banks, slowing loan growth could result in lower net interest income and revenue,” he added.

The concerns about household finances have also weighed on consumer finance stocks with shares of American Express (AXP), Capital One (COF), Synchrony, (SYF) and Discover (DFS) down between 15-22% over the past month, Martinez said.

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Finance

Buyers snap up homes for $200,000 under asking price as ‘fear and mystery’ grips Aussie property

Published

2 hours ago

April 15, 2026

Press Room

Buyers snap up homes for 0,000 under asking price as ‘fear and mystery’ grips Aussie property

Buyers are reporting making ‘lowball’ offers and having some success. (Source: REA/Getty)

When George Cherchian attended an open home in Sydney’s west recently, he was on the look out for one thing. A key detail would indicate how much competition he would have in vying for the house.

He attended every inspection for the property prior to the scheduled auction date. And when he didn’t see it, the buyers agent knew he was in a good position.

“I went to every single open home, and what I look for there is essentially the same faces. So if I’m seeing your face at every open I go to for one particular property, it tells me that you are just as interested in it as my clients are, or as I am,” he told Yahoo Finance.

“But that wasn’t the case here, we didn’t have any sort of repeat faces.”

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In the end, he put an offer in ahead of the planned auction date. Despite it being considerably lower than the advertised asking price, the vendor ultimately accepted it.

On behalf of the buyer, he secured the Baulkham Hills property for $1.9 million, $200,000 below the $2.1 million asking price.

Cherchian explained that in this particular case the vendor was in a position “where they couldn’t really afford to defer the settlement” as they had to sell because they had committed to buying another property.

But as “caution” grips property markets in Australia’s capital cities thanks to rising interest rates, higher fuel prices, ongoing uncertainty with the Iran war and impending policy changes around the taxation of investment properties, Cherchian said the sale is emblematic of the opportunities buyers can find right now in a less competitive market.

“Now that there are not as many buyers to contend with, there’s almost a bit of a window of opportunity for those who are able to make a decision,” he told Yahoo Finance.

Overall, he said many buyers in Sydney were showing increased “caution” during so much uncertainty. As a result, “the things that need to transact, they are transacting at a discount”.

An auction for an Australian house with limited interest. — It’s been years since buyers were perceived to have much leverage in most Aussie housing markets. (Source: Getty)

Auction clearance rates in Sydney and Melbourne dropped in March, with the most recent results from April showing a clearance rate of just 54 per cent in Sydney, according to Domain, about 10 per cent lower than at the same time last year.

Dwelling prices went backwards in Sydney and Melbourne in the March quarter this year, according to property data giant Cotality. Prices fell 0.6 per cent in Melbourne and 0.2 per cent in Sydney.

Meanwhile this week, ANZ cut its forecast for capital city property price growth to be below inflation in 2026 in the face of weak consumer confidence, rising interest rates and the Middle East war.

“There are still some who recognise that uncertainty can create opportunity. They’re asking whether this is a chance to secure better terms, and in some cases, it is,” Cherchian said.

“It is definitely is a good time, especially for first time buyers” who don’t need to time a sale with an existing property.

NSW broker Nathan Linton who works further north of the city, told Yahoo Finance of a similar success story recently for one of his clients that he got approved in November but had been struggling for months to secure a property.

“I’m having clients that are having success buying at reasonable prices, probably because there’s less competition at the moment,” he said, pointing to a backdrop of “fear and mystery”.

“This particular client, we did a quick digital evaluation (on a desired property), and it was worth $1.4 million. And he’s gone in there, attended the auction, and they let it go for $1.21 million,” he told Yahoo.

“I think the good news story that people kind of like to hear sometimes is that there’s still opportunity. And maybe in a market where everyone’s scared, it’s a good time to be buying because you can have a bargain.”

Linton runs a subreddit called ‘Asked a Broker’ where he shared the recent anecdote and was met with similar stories from other Aussies.

“We just bought ours … for $300k under what it last sold for a few years ago!” one Melbourne buyer commented.

“We lowballed not expecting anything and were happy to walk away given all the uncertainty but they said yes. Definitely a lot of fear out there.”

Nathan Linton (left) and George (right) pictured. — Nathan Linton (left) and George Cherchian (right) say buyers can get lucky with a bargain at the moment. (Source: Supplied)

While rising interest rates crimp borrowing power, Linton also agreed the current conditions could help first home buyers with a big enough deposit.

The broker said rising interest rates will impact buyers a little differently depending on their profile. As an example, each standard increase of 0.25 per cent in the RBA’s official cash rate would mean:

A single person with an income of $100,000 and no dependents would see their borrowing capacity reduced by $12,000.
A married couple with one child and a household income of $200,000 would see their borrowing power reduced by about $25,000 for each interest rate hike.

The higher the borrowing amount the bigger the overall numerical impact, he noted, with most banks and brokers in the industry indicating the average home loan would see borrowing capacity reduced by $25,000 to $30,000 with each 0.25 interest rate increase.

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Finance

Mastercard’s $1.8 billion bet heralds the collapse of financial silos

Published

14 hours ago

April 15, 2026

Press Room

Mastercard’s .8 billion bet heralds the collapse of financial silos

Key insight: Mastercard’s acquisition of BVNK was a hedge against irrelevance. It suggests that the companies that defined the last era of finance are now preparing for a very different future.
What’s at stake: Many of today’s financial institutions will not survive in their current form.
Forward look: Banks, brokerages and payment firms still possess enormous advantages in customer trust, regulatory expertise and distribution. The question is whether they transform quickly enough to remain central to the financial system, or end up on the outside looking in.

When Mastercard recently announced it would acquire stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, it wasn’t just another banking headline. It was a massive, flashing signal. One of the most entrenched players in global payments is preparing for a world where money doesn’t move through traditional rails at all.

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For years, financial institutions treated blockchain as a hedge, not a priority. They launched pilot programs, stood up innovation labs and issued press releases, but stopped short of meaningful integration. The goal wasn’t to transform their businesses. It was to signal they wouldn’t be left behind.

Now these firms are writing billion-dollar checks to ensure they won’t be.

The Mastercard news is the latest evidence that blockchain infrastructure is quietly becoming real financial infrastructure.

JPMorganChase’s blockchain-based payments network, now called Kinexys by J.P. Morgan, has processed more than $1.5 trillion in transactions and moves billions of dollars daily for institutional clients across currencies and time zones. What started as an internal project now operates as a 24/7 settlement network using real corporate payments and liquidity flows.

At the same time, asset managers are bringing investment products onto blockchain rails. BlackRock has launched tokenized funds, expanded digital asset offerings, and is building teams around tokenization, stablecoins and market structure — not as pilots, but as business lines intended to scale globally. These products allow assets like Treasury bills to move digitally, shrinking the gap between cash management and markets that increasingly operate around the clock.

These examples and others represent an uncomfortable truth: Many of today’s financial institutions will not survive in their current form.

Today’s traditional financial system is built around silos. Increasingly, technology is making these structures obsolete.

Consumers bank in one place, invest in another, make payments through separate networks, borrow through specialized lenders and store assets somewhere else entirely. Behind the scenes, each layer extracts value and charges users (even though services appear “free”) through fees, spreads, settlement delays and execution costs.

Credit card networks take a percentage of every purchase. Brokerage platforms advertise commission-free trading while monetizing customer order flow behind the scenes. Banks profit from deposit spreads while offering customers minimal yield. Settlement between institutions can still take days, tying up liquidity across markets.

Mastercard’s business exists because of those silos. They connect banks, merchants and consumers across fragmented systems, and take a fee at every step.

These structures persist not because they are necessary, but because they have been profitable.

Blockchain infrastructure changes that.

When money, securities and collateral move on shared digital rails, entire layers of reconciliation and settlement complexity can disappear. Payments, investing, lending and asset management no longer need to operate as separate businesses. They can become integrated features of unified financial platforms. In that world, shifting from cash into government bonds or stocks becomes a near instant digital exchange rather than a multiday process involving brokers, custodians and clearinghouses.

That convergence has already begun. BlackRock’s expansion into tokenized funds reflects a recognition that assets themselves will move across interoperable rails, where currency and collateral operate within the same system rather than across fragmented intermediaries.

At the same time, systems like JPMorgan’s Kinexys show how money itself is beginning to move on those same rails, enabling real-time payments, liquidity transfers and settlement within a single infrastructure layer.

The BVNK acquisition points to something larger than crypto adoption. It shows that even the companies that built the existing financial rails now expect those rails to evolve or be replaced. Additionally, some analysts now believe AI-driven agents will route payments through stablecoins by default, selecting the cheapest and fastest rails automatically without regard for legacy networks, accelerating adoption even further.

Many incumbent institutions have legitimate concerns about stability, compliance and consumer protection. Financial infrastructure requires trust. Yet it is also true that parts of the industry have strong incentives to slow structural change. Banks benefit from low-cost deposits and spreads that could shrink in a world where digital dollars move more freely. Payment networks have built lucrative businesses around interchange fees that lower-cost settlement rails could compress. Brokerage models rely on execution and order-flow economics that become harder to sustain in markets operating continuously on shared infrastructure.

The legislative debate around crypto that has stalled in Congress illustrates this tension. Some of this debate is about risk and consumer protection, but a key underlying issue is whether digital dollars should be allowed to provide users yield directly. Banks rely on low-cost deposits and earn by investing that money while customers receive little interest in return. If stablecoin providers can offer dollar-backed assets that move freely across digital networks and also pay competitive yields, deposits could migrate away from traditional banks.

Mastercard’s move isn’t a bet on crypto hype. It’s a hedge against irrelevance. The news suggests that the companies that defined the last era of finance are now preparing for a system where value moves more quickly, cheaply and across shared infrastructure.

Industries rarely disappear overnight, but they can and they do evolve. Banks, brokerages and payment firms still possess enormous advantages in customer trust, regulatory expertise and distribution. The question is whether they transform quickly enough to remain central to the financial system, or end up on the outside looking in.

Finance

Morgan Stanley has a blunt message on S&P 500

Published

1 day ago

April 14, 2026

Press Room

Morgan Stanley has a blunt message on S&P 500

Most investors still feel like the market is fragile. Morgan Stanley thinks it is further along than they realize.

In his Sunday Start note dated April 12, Morgan Stanley equity strategist Michael Wilson argued that the S&P 500 was in the process of carving out a low after hitting the bottom of the firm’s targeted correction range of 6,300 to 6,500. The bank has consistently maintained that this is a correction within a new bull market, not the start of a bear market.

“As always, the market trades in advance of the headlines. Investors should do the same,” Wilson wrote.

The correction began last October, Wilson noted. Since then, the S&P 500’s forward price-to-earnings ratio has declined 18% from its peak.

That kind of P/E compression typically accompanies a recession or an actively tightening Federal Reserve. Morgan Stanley’s base case includes neither.

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Beneath the surface, more than half of the stocks in the Russell 3000 have dropped 20% or more from their 52-week highs. Wilson does not see that as a sign of complacency. He sees it as a market that has appropriately discounted the risks.

The key supporting argument is earnings. Price damage for the S&P 500 has been contained to less than 10% because earnings growth is moving in the opposite direction from valuations. Falling multiples alongside improving earnings growth is, in Wilson’s framing, the signature of a bull market correction rather than a bear market.

Wilson addressed the comparisons being drawn to previous oil shocks directly. In those prior cycles, he noted, earnings were already deteriorating or falling sharply when energy prices spiked.

Today, earnings are accelerating from already high levels. The median company is growing earnings per share in the double digits, the fastest pace since 2021.

Tax refunds are running more than 10% higher this year, which Wilson cited as additional context for why the oil move feels more contained in practice than in headlines.

On other risks, Wilson argued that both private credit and AI disruption appear better understood by markets, with many affected stocks already down 40% or more.

On private credit specifically, he cited colleague Vishy Tirupattur’s view that risks are material but not systemic, and that tightening in private credit could ultimately drive business back toward traditional lenders.

With AI, Wilson said the disruption narrative has moved faster than actual implementation and that the enterprise application layer remains in early days. In the near term, he said AI looks more likely to support margins than compress them, particularly for early adopters.

Mordant/Getty Images

Wilson was clear about what stands between the market and its next leg higher. The equity-rates correlation has turned decisively negative again, meaning higher yields are once more a direct headwind for valuations.

The recent hawkish pivot from central banks, driven by commodity inflation concerns, is what Wilson identified as the primary source of current market anxiety and likely the final hurdle equities need to clear. He noted that part of last week’s brief rally coincided with falling bond volatility after Fed Chair Powell signaled a more neutral position.

Financial conditions are tightening, but Wilson observed that this dynamic could ironically create the conditions that allow the Fed to override its primary mandates. The key question, in his view, is whether conditions need to tighten further before they ease. He believes the issue will be resolved as the transition in Fed leadership is completed.

Morgan Stanley correction target range for S&P 500: 6,300 to 6,500
S&P 500 forward P/E decline from peak: 18%
S&P 500 price damage: less than 10%
Russell 3000 stocks down 20% or more: more than half
Median S&P 500 company EPS growth: double digits, fastest since 2021
Tax refunds year-over-year increase: more than 10%
Bull market start: April 2025, following 2022-2025 rolling recession trough

Wilson continued to favor a barbell approach. On the cyclical side, he highlighted financials, industrials, and consumer discretionary goods, where earnings remain strong and valuations have compressed. On the growth side, he pointed to the hyperscalers, where sentiment and valuations have also reset to what he called healthy levels.

The final phase of a correction is rarely clean, Wilson cautioned. Another retest is possible, particularly if rates or bond volatility push higher again. But he framed that possibility as consistent with a market continuing to carve out a low, not one entering a new bear market.

His closing message was direct: markets are already discounting a future that investors have not yet fully recognized. “Markets aren’t typically so gracious as to offer multiple opportunities,” Wilson wrote, which is why the bank has encouraged investors to be early rather than wait for confirmation.

Related: Barclays just made a surprising call on the S&P 500

This story was originally published by TheStreet on Apr 14, 2026, where it first appeared in the Investing section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.