Markus Andrews

Select retail investors will be able to earn royalties as users of trading platform Dub duplicate their portfolios.
It’s part of a new creator program launched by the investing app.

Manusapon Kasosod | Moment | Getty Images

Dub, a platform that allows retail traders to mimic the investments of notable people in business and government, debuted a service Thursday that pays select everyday investors to share their portfolios.
Retail traders accepted into Dub’s so-called top creator program will be paid royalties for users to access their model portfolio. The creator program marks the latest push from Dub to sway mom-and-pop investors to its platform, which encourages users to forgo traditional stock picking and instead duplicate other traders’ portfolios.

“Fundamentally, we are rethinking the distribution of how capital flows to investing talent,” said Steven Wang, Dub’s founder and chief executive. “We are really at the very early innings of another retail investing revolution.”
Since its launch nearly a year ago, Dub has offered users the opportunity to track and copy the investment portfolios of people ranging from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. Users, who pay $9.99 a month or $89.99 a year, can essentially make replicas of these portfolios using their own money held in Dub’s broker dealer.
These portfolios are tracked for changes over time, with any trades automatically mirrored to others who copied them. In other words, Wang said traders can go on “auto pilot” once holding a copy of someone’s portfolio and eliminate the human error of missing any trades.
Previously, users could opt to make their portfolios available for copy by others if they met a personal investment minimum of $1,000. Now, the creator program adds a financial incentive for accepted users.
The program’s name can draw comparisons to influencer payment structures from social media platforms such as TikTok. Accepted traders get paid a scaling fee that takes into consideration several social metrics. The rate isn’t based entirely on the number of portfolio copies per creator, but that figure may be a factor.

The amount of royalties received is determined individually between Dub and each creator in the program, Wang said.
Multiple traders were already signed onto the program at the time of launch, according to Dub. Their roster includes Andrew Ver Planck, an alumnus of MacKay Shields and Putnam Investments, and Lawrence Fuller, a SeekingAlpha analyst.
Dub has a $100 minimum deposit, though some portfolios require larger investments to make a copy. The company’s broker dealer is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The ‘next generation’ of investing influencers

Dub’s program comes amid a booming period for both retail trading and the influencer economy.
Data shows that net inflows from average Joe traders to popular stocks and funds remain elevated compared with pre-pandemic levels. That’s despite the boom-and-bust cycle of day trading and meme stocks that captured America’s interest during the Covid pandemic.
At the same time, the pandemic lockdowns catalyzed a surge of interest around people with large followings on online platforms. That’s bolstered the sub-economy tied to digital creators, which Goldman Sachs estimated can swell to a $480 billion revenue opportunity by 2027. Goldman reported in 2023 that around 50 million people work as content creators around the globe.
Dub’s app has been downloaded more than 700,000 times, according to Wang. The company expects to reach 1 million before the end of the first quarter.
Looking ahead, Wang said he hopes to see the best individual traders gain followings and fortunes through the creator program and Dub’s platform. One of the benefits of Dub, he said, is the ability to see verified returns of each portfolio that can be copied before a user chooses to throw their own money behind it.
“I want the next five Warren Buffetts to be surfaced and famous on Dub,” he said. “If we’re really successful with the top creator program, the next generation of the best fund managers, the best traders in the world that people follow will rise from Dub.” More

The IRS plans to send automatic payments of up to $1,400 to 1 million taxpayers this month.
Here’s how to tell if you’re eligible and answers to other top questions.

sturti | E+ | Getty Images

As tax filing season starts, 1 million taxpayers are already set to receive automatic payments from the IRS.
That has many people asking, “Will I receive an IRS stimulus check in 2025?” “IRS automatic stimulus payments” is a breakout search, with rising queries related to eligibility, Google Trends data from Wednesday shows.

Those sums are not this year’s tax refund. Instead, the payments of up to $1,400 per individual represent Recovery Rebate Credits that were not claimed by eligible people on their 2021 tax returns.
“Looking at our internal data, we realized that one million taxpayers overlooked claiming this complex credit when they were actually eligible,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a December statement when the automatic payments were announced.
“To minimize headaches and get this money to eligible taxpayers, we’re making these payments automatic, meaning these people will not be required to go through the extensive process of filing an amended return to receive it,” Werfel said.

Who is now eligible for a $1,400 payment?

The IRS plans to issue about $2.4 billion in automatic payments to eligible individuals who did not claim the Recovery Rebate Credit on their 2021 tax returns.
The maximum payment is $1,400 per individual, or $2,800 per married couple.

A family of four — including a married couple and two qualifying dependents claimed on their tax returns — may receive up to $5,600.
However, the payment amounts may vary, according to the IRS.
The full credit amount is available to individual taxpayers with up to $75,000 in adjusted gross income and to married couples who file jointly with up to $150,000 for 2021. The credit begins to phase out for income above those thresholds and is reduced to zero for individuals with $80,000 or more in adjusted gross income and married couples with $160,000 or more.

What do I need to do to receive an automatic payment?

If you’re eligible to receive a payment, you do not need to do anything, according to the IRS.
The payments should arrive by late January and will be direct deposited to the bank account listed on your 2023 tax return or sent by paper check to the address the IRS has on record.
Eligible taxpayers will also receive a separate letter notifying them the payment has been made.

How can I claim the money if I don’t receive a check?

Did the stimulus checks cause inflation?

Millions of Americans looked forward to the stimulus checks in the wake of the sudden Covid-19 shutdown that may have cut off their usual sources of income.
Yet following those 2020 and 2021 payments — as well as enhanced unemployment and direct child tax credit checks — inflation spiked to levels not seen in decades.
That has led some to wonder whether those stimulus efforts contributed to the inflation spike.
In a recent CNBC interview, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the “spending was necessary” to help avoid the suffering of people losing their livelihoods and businesses.
“It may have contributed a little bit to the inflation,” Yellen said. “But by and large, the inflation was a supply-side phenomenon.”

The goods people wanted from China and other parts of the world faced huge supply chain problems, which pushed up prices, she said.
On Wednesday, new government inflation data showed core inflation — excluding food and energy prices — slowed in December, which helped prompt a stock market rally. Even with that progress, the Federal Reserve still has work to do to reach its 2% inflation target. More

The average end-of-year bonus rose about 2% in 2024, according to an exclusive look at data from human resource provider Gusto.
In a tight labor market, employers often use bonuses as a tool to keep their top performers engaged.
But workers increasingly value other perks as well, separate studies show, particularly when it comes to flexible hours and work-life balance.

After a prolonged period of job gains and wage increases, employers capped off the year by giving their employees bigger year-end bonuses, a new report found.
The average bonus awarded in December was $2,503, on average, up from $2,447 in 2023 — an increase of just over 2%, according to an exclusive look at data from human resource provider Gusto, based on more than 400,000 small- to medium-sized businesses nationwide.

“The average represents about one paycheck. That turns into a pretty significant amount of money especially at the end of the year,” said Gusto’s senior economist, Nich Tremper.
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“This is an economy that ended 2024 much better than expected and small businesses are taking advantage of that — that includes wages and compensation for the current employees,” Tremper said.

Sectors that saw bigger, or smaller, bonuses

But bonuses also varied by industry, Gusto found: The average end-of-year bonus increased significantly among several white-collar industries, including communications, technology and professional services.  
Adam Beasley, owner of Adam Up Accounting firm in Payson, Utah, said he determines bonuses for his staff based on the prior year’s profitability. “We were up another 8% in 2024, so the bonus was bigger.”

Beasley, who does accounting work for other small business owners, said he feels even more optimistic about 2025. “I take care of a lot of blue-collar companies — plumbers, electricians, guys putting in infrastructure — and a lot of them are doing well because there’s still a lot of work to get done.”
Meanwhile, many service industry workers saw smaller end-of-year bonuses in 2024 compared with the end of 2023, Gusto found. Sectors such as transportation and warehousing faced reduced demand, leading to significant declines in year-end bonuses for workers in these trades, according to Tremper.

Overall, the jobs market remained remarkably strong throughout 2024, other reports show. Employment grew each month and, as of the latest reading, the unemployment rate edged down to 4.1% in December. Average hourly earnings also increased 0.3% last month.
In a tight labor market, some employers use bonuses as a tool to keep their top performers engaged, with fewer companies paying out bonuses to the entire staff, Tremper said. The share of workers receiving a bonus declined in 2024 by almost 2% compared with 2023.

Money is key, but so is work-life balance

“The key thing is that companies need to remain competitive,” said Michelle Reisdorf, district president at Robert Half, a recruitment and staffing firm. “Bonuses are that extra perk that employees look for when deciding whether to stay in a job or look for a new job.”
According to Robert Half’s survey of more than 1,600 hiring managers in November, 62% of managers said bonuses were higher in 2024 compared with the year before and 28% offered bonuses in line with 2023. Only about 5% of managers said bonuses were smaller than they were previously.
For workers, “money always ranks near the top in perks,” Reisdorf said. However, priorities have also shifted, largely since the pandemic. These days, employees are more likely to consider work-life balance, flexible hours and mental health support as equally important.
To that end, workers increasingly value flexible or hybrid work schedules, extra paid days off, additional options for health insurance or more robust retirement saving plans, Reisdorf said: “The key one is flexibility.”
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The Federal Reserve is expected to hold rates steady at its Jan. 28-29 meeting with a few more rate cuts over the course of the year.
As a result, most types of consumer loans will be moderately cheaper by the end of 2025, Bankrate chief financial analyst Greg McBride said.
From mortgage rates and credit cards to auto loans and savings accounts, here are his predictions for where rates are headed.

Interest rates moved lower near the end of 2024 as the Federal Reserve cut rates three times, shaving a full percentage point off the federal funds rate since September. In 2025, that trend is likely to continue.
But with inflation still above the Fed’s 2% target, a strong labor market and a new administration, the central bank already indicated that it would move more slowly on rate cuts in the year ahead.

Federal Reserve officials reduced their outlook for expected cuts in 2025 to two from four, assuming quarter-point increments, according to minutes from their December meeting.
“Robust U.S. economic data heightened concerns that the Federal Reserve may see little scope for cutting rates in 2025,” Solita Marcelli, chief investment officer Americas for UBS Global Wealth Management, wrote in a research note.
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Experts anticipate the Fed will hold steady on interest rates at its Jan. 28-29 meeting, and follow with only a few rate cuts through the year. Given that, most Americans can expect to see their financing expenses ease, but not by much, said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.
“Rates were abnormally low for the better part of 15 years, and they’ve been abnormally high for the last two,” he said. “They’re coming down, but where they’ll settle out is going to be a level that’s higher than what we had seen before 2022.”

Although Fed officials indicated two cuts, McBride expects as many as three coming over the course of the year, bringing the key benchmark rate to 3.5%-3.75%. Although that’s not the rate consumers pay, the Fed’s moves still affect the borrowing and savings rates consumers see every day.
From mortgage rates and credit cards to auto loans and savings accounts, here are his predictions for where rates are headed in the year ahead:
Prediction: Credit card rates fall to 19.8%

A customer moves through the check out lane with his groceries at a Costco Wholesale store on April 3, 2024 in Colchester, Vermont.
Robert Nickelsberg | Getty Images

Since the central bank started cutting interest rates, the average credit card interest rate has only edged off extremely high levels. 
Going forward, annual percentage rates aren’t likely to improve much more. McBride predicts that the average APR on a credit card will fall to 19.8% by the end of 2025, down about half a percentage point from where it stands now. 
Cardholders usually see the impact within a billing cycle or two. But for those carrying a balance from month to month, “borrowers need to press on with debt-repayment efforts,” McBride said. Rates “won’t be coming down quickly enough to provide meaningful relief.”
Prediction: Mortgage rates to hit 6.5%
“Mortgage rates have gone up — not down — since the Fed began cutting interest rates in September,” McBride said.
McBride now expects mortgage rates to “spend most of the year in the 6% range,” he said, “with a short-lived spike above 7%.”
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage could end the year at 6.5%, he projected. But since most people have fixed-rate mortgages, their rate won’t change unless they refinance or sell their current home and buy another property. 

Prediction: Auto loan rates edge down to 7%
When it comes to their cars, consumers have been facing bigger monthly payments, thanks to higher vehicle prices and elevated interest rates on new loans.
While anyone planning to finance a new car could benefit from lower rates to come, affordability concerns won’t change significantly.
Five-year new car loan rates are expected to fall to 7% from 7.53%, while four-year used car financing costs could drop to 7.75% from 8.21% by the end of the year, according to McBride.
Prediction: High-yield savings rates dip below 4%
In recent years, top-yielding online savings accounts have offered the best returns in over a decade and still pay nearly 5%, according to McBride.
Even though those rates are falling, “they’re coming down slowly, and they’re still well above inflation,” McBride said.
McBride predicts that top-yielding savings accounts and money market accounts could hit 3.8% by the end of 2025, while the top-yielding one-year and five-year CDs will fall to 3.7% and 3.95%, respectively.
“That adds up to a pretty attractive environment for savers,” McBride said.
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The Biden administration announced that it would forgive $4.5 billion in student debt for 261,000 borrowers who attended the now-defunct Ashford University.
Borrowers who qualify for the relief are those who studied at the for-profit, largely online institution between March 1, 2009, and April 30, 2020.
The California Department of Education successfully sued the institution, which it accused of deceiving students by making false promises and providing false information, including about costs and career outcomes, to get them to enroll.

Headquarters of Ashford University in San Diego, a for-profit university belonging to Bridgepoint Education.
Frank Duenzl | Picture-Alliance | DPA | AP

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it would forgive $4.5 billion in student debt for 261,000 borrowers who attended the now-defunct Ashford University.
Borrowers who qualify for the relief are those who studied at the for-profit, largely online institution between March 1, 2009, and April 30, 2020.

The California Department of Justice requested the loan cancellation for federal student loan borrowers based on evidence it gathered during its successful lawsuit against Ashford University and its parent company, Zovio, Inc., the Education Department said.
California accused the university of deceiving students by making false promises and providing false information, including about costs and career outcomes, to get them to enroll.
The California Department of Justice secured a more than $20 million penalty against Zovio and Ashford in 2022, the Education Department said.
The recruiters at Ashford University misled students, telling them they would be able to work as teachers, social workers, nurses, or drug and alcohol counselors, the Education Department said. In reality, the university didn’t have the necessary state approval or accreditation for students to enter these professions, “meaning students wasted years of their lives and incurred tens of thousands of dollars of debt for degrees they could not use,” the department wrote in its press release.
Students were also lied to by Ashford staff about the cost of attendance, how much debt they’d accumulate and how long it would take to complete certain degrees, the agency added.

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“Numerous federal and state investigations have documented the deceptive recruiting tactics frequently used by Ashford University,” said U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal in a statement.
“In reality, 90 percent of Ashford students never graduated, and the few who did were often left with large debts and low incomes,” he wrote.
The University of Arizona acquired Ashford University in 2020. Zovio approved a plan to go out of business in late 2022, according to HigherEd Dive.
“The department notes that this decision was based on evidence presented in a lawsuit brought by the California Department of Justice against Ashford and its parent company, Zovio Inc.,” University of Arizona spokesman Mieczyslaw J. “Mitch” Zak said. “UAGC was not a party to, and did not participate in, the California lawsuit, and it had no relationship with Ashford or Zovio during this time period.”
Since Biden took office, he has forgiven debt for more than 5 million federal student loan borrowers, totaling $183.6 billion in relief. More

Hindenburg founder Nate Anderson said the firm has “finished the pipeline of ideas we were working on.”
One of Hindenburg’s first high-profile reports came in 2020 and was focused on vehicle startup Nikola.
The firm has also gone after the companies of major financial figures, including Carl Icahn’s Icahn Enterprises LP and the business empire of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani.

Nate Anderson on January 6, 2023 in New York. Anderson exposes corporate fraud and ponzi schemes through his company Hindenburg Research.
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Hindenburg Research, an upstart research and investment firm that made a name for itself with several successful short bets, is closing, founder Nate Anderson announced Wednesday.
“As I’ve shared with family, friends and our team since late last year, I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research. The plan has been to wind up after we finished the pipeline of ideas we were working on. And as of the last Ponzi cases we just completed and are sharing with regulators, that day is today,” Anderson wrote in a note posted to the firm’s website.

Anderson founded Hindenburg in 2017, and the company has published negative research reports about dozens of companies in the years since. One of Hindenburg’s first high-profile reports came in 2020 and was focused on vehicle startup Nikola. Part of the report included an allegation that Nikola had faked the autonomous capabilities of a semi-truck in a video, which the company later admitted. Nikola founder Trevor Milton was later sentenced to four years in prison.
Many of the targets of Hindenburg’s reports were smaller companies. The firm has also gone after the companies of major financial figures, including Carl Icahn’s Icahn Enterprises LP and the business empire of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani.
The most recent report filed by the company was on Jan. 2 about auto retailer Carvana, which it called a “father-son accounting grift for the ages.” In a statement, Carvana called the firm’s report “intentionally misleading and inaccurate.” The stock fell more than 11% the day after Hindenburg published its report but has since recovered.
Hindenburg was a short seller as well as a research house. This means that the firm was placing bets against the companies it was researching, putting it in position to profit if the stock declined. As Hindenburg’s reputation grew, some stocks saw immediate negative reactions after the reports were published.
It is not clear how much money Hindenburg made from its short bets.
The rise of Hindenburg came at a time when the controversial practice of short selling was falling out of favor elsewhere. The meme-stock craze of 2021 pitted retail investors against hedge funds, causing some professional investors to back away from short selling. Federal officials have also been investigating other short sellers in recent years, including the Department of Justice hitting Citron’s Andrew Left with securities fraud charges last year. More

In a new U.S. Department of Education memo obtained by CNBC, a top official lays out the steps the Biden administration has taken to stave off a default crisis among federal student loan borrowers.
It details when garnishments may resume — in some cases, as early as this summer.
There were around 7.5 million federal student loan borrowers in default, the Education Department said in 2022.
That grim figure led to comparisons with the 2008 mortgage crisis.

President Joe Biden is joined by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona as he announces new actions to protect borrowers after the Supreme Court struck down his student loan forgiveness plan, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 30, 2023.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty

This year, for the first time in roughly five years, borrowers who have defaulted on their federal student loan debt will face collection activity, including the garnishment of their wages and retirement benefits.
In a new U.S. Department of Education memo obtained by CNBC, a top official lays out for the first time details of when garnishments may resume — in some cases, as early as this summer.

The memo, dated days before the Trump administration takes over, details steps the Biden administration has taken to stave off a default crisis among federal student loan borrowers. It outlines strategies for the department to help student loan borrowers stay current as collection efforts resume this year.
“It is critical to continue the initiatives and fully implement the actions outlined in this memo, as the Department plans to resume default penalties and mandatory collections later this year,” U.S. Undersecretary of Education James Kvaal writes in the memo addressed to Denise Carter, acting chief operating officer for Federal Student Aid.
There were around 7.5 million federal student loan borrowers in default, the Education Department said in 2022. That grim figure led to comparisons with the 2008 mortgage crisis.
By late 2024, the number in default had fallen to around 5.5 million, the department’s memo said.

Borrowers could face Social Security offsets by August

After the Covid-era pause on federal student loan payments expired in September 2023, the Biden administration offered borrowers a 12-month “on-ramp” to repayment. During that time, they were shielded from most of the consequences of falling behind on their payments. The relief period expired on Sept. 30, 2024.

Now federal student loan borrowers in default may see their wages garnished starting in October of this year, according to the Education Department. Meanwhile, Social Security benefit offsets could resume as early as August.
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The Department of Education memo directs its Federal Student Aid office to continue the Biden administration’s work to avoid defaults.
That includes making it easier for borrowers to enroll in affordable repayment plans, such as letting borrowers authorize the department to obtain their income information from the IRS and to automatically enroll borrowers in an income-driven repayment plan if they become 75 days delinquent on their loans. (IDR plans base a borrower’s monthly bill on their discretionary income and family size, and some are left with a $0 monthly bill. Any remaining debt is canceled after a certain period, typically 20 or 25 years.)
Borrowers should also be “screened for other forgiveness opportunities before they formally default,” the memo says.
“Automatically identifying borrowers who are eligible for forgiveness through data matches with other federal agencies is a very good innovation,” said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. “This should be done for all borrowers, not just for borrowers who are about to default.”
The memo also encourages the Education Department to explore options for increasing the current interest rate incentive to get borrowers to sign up for automatic payments to their student loan servicer. As of now, borrowers can typically get an 0.25 percentage point reduction in their interest rate by doing so.
It’s uncertain how much, if at all, the Trump administration will implement the ideas in the memo, Kantrowitz said.
“Policy shifts in the weeks before inauguration will be subject to scrutiny by the incoming administration and memos are easily rescinded,” he said.

Fewer consequences on defaulted student loans

Later this year, for the first time, borrowers in default will be able to enroll in the Income-Based Repayment plan “and have a pathway to forgiveness,” the memo says. Currently, federal student loan borrowers need to exit default before they can access any of the income-driven repayment plans, including the IBR.
According to the memo, the Biden administration has eliminated most collection fees on federal student loans.

In early 2024, it also took steps to protect a higher amount of people’s Social Security benefits from the department’s collection powers. When the consequences of defaults resume, those with a monthly Social Security benefit under $1,883 can protect those benefits from offset, compared with the current protected amount of $750 in place today.
“Available data suggest that these actions will effectively halt Social Security offsets for more than half of affected borrowers and reduce the offset amount for many others,” the memo says. More