With Black Friday only about a week away, there are signs consumers aren’t in a jolly, high-spending mood.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that sales by U.S. retailers were 0.1% lower in October than in September. The agency said department store sales fell 1% and clothing sales were unchanged from the previous month.

That total excludes sales at gas stations and auto parts retailers.

A survey from the National Retail Federation and CNBC, also released Wednesday, showed similar results, with sales unchanged from September to October.

The lack of improvement might be a sign shoppers are going to pinch their pennies over the holidays this year. Ted Rossman, an analyst who covers topics including personal finance for Bankrate, said the report is an ‘ominous’ sign for November and December.

‘Nonstore retailers, basically a proxy for e-commerce shops, only expanded their sales 0.2% from September to October. That’s surprising given all of the early holiday promotions,’ Rossman wrote, noting that Target, Amazon and Walmart all had major promotions. ‘Consumer sentiment remains depressed and retailers have to be getting nervous about the all-important holiday period.’

Consumers are indeed feeling more pressure lately, and that might leave them reluctant to spend.

Interest rates on credit cards are at longtime highs. People are carrying bigger balances on their cards than they had previously. Student loan payments just resumed after a long pause. And while the pace of inflation has slowed, prices are still notably higher than they were a few years ago.

Meanwhile, the job market isn’t quite as strong as it has been, although unemployment is very low. And more than three years after the last round of pandemic stimulus, people have spent most of what they’d saved up.

All of that is leaving consumers feeling gloomy. The University of Michigan says consumer sentiment has fallen for four months in a row, although it remains better than it was a year ago. The school found that people with lower incomes were most concerned.

The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index shows that almost 70% of respondents expect a recession in the next 12 months.

Not everyone thinks retailers are going to get the equivalent of a lump of coal. Chris Zaccarelli, the chief investment officer for the Independent Advisor Alliance, said Wednesday’s retail sales data was a bit better than Wall Street experts had expected.

‘Given expectations that retail sales would contract month-over-month, instead we saw slight gains in the data. In addition, the prior month’s data was revised higher as well, showing that this month wasn’t a statistical fluke,’ Zaccarelli wrote.

A group of Wells Fargo economists, including senior economist Tim Quinlan, economist Shannon Seery and economic analyst Jeremiah Kohl, wrote in October that sales will grow 5% compared to last year. That sounds pretty good, and is above a longer-term average, but they acknowledged that it might feel a bit sluggish to retailers because growth over the previous couple of years was unusually strong.

‘Purchasing power is fading and competition for consumer wallets is rising. Both of these factors have contributed to lower sales momentum and will likely remain a headwind to overall purchases this holiday season,’ they said.

Disney on Tuesday released a study showing its economic impact in Florida at $40.3 billion as it battles Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his appointees over their takeover of the district that governs the entertainment company’s massive theme park resort in central Florida.

Disney accounted for 263,000 jobs in Florida, more than three times the actual workforce at Walt Disney World, according to the study conducted by Oxford Economics and commissioned by Disney, covering fiscal year 2022. Besides direct employment and spending, the study attributed the company’s multibillion-dollar impact to indirect influences, such as supply chain and employees’ spending.

The jobs include Disney employees as well as jobs supported by visitor spending off Disney World property. Disney employs 82,000 workers in Florida, not only at Disney World outside Orlando, but also Disney Cruise Line in Port Canaveral, Fort Lauderdale and Miami, as well as a resort in Vero Beach.

In central Florida, Disney directly accounts for 1 in 8 jobs, and for every direct job, another 1.7 jobs are supported across Florida, Oxford Economics said.

The time period in the study is before the takeover earlier this year of Disney World’s governing district by DeSantis and his appointees after Disney publicly opposed a state law banning classroom lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. The law was championed by DeSantis, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Disney officials in the past year have said the company plans to invest an additional $17 billion over the next decade in central Florida, including potentially adding another 13,000 jobs. However, the company has shown a willingness to pull back investing in the Sunshine State.

Earlier this year, Disney scrapped plans to relocate 2,000 employees from Southern California to work in digital technology, finance and product development, an investment estimated at $1 billion.

Disney World already has four theme parks, more than 25 hotels, two water parks and a shopping and dining district on 25,000 acres (10,117 hectares).

Disney is battling DeSantis and his appointees in federal and state courts over the takeover of what was formally called the Reedy Creek Improvement District but was renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District after DeSantis appointees gained control. The district was created by the Florida Legislature in 1967 to handle municipal services like firefighting, road repairs and waste hauling, and it was controlled by Disney supporters until earlier this year.

Before control of the district changed hands from Disney allies to DeSantis appointees, the Disney supporters on its board signed agreements with Disney shifting control over design and construction at Disney World to the company. The new DeSantis appointees said the “eleventh-hour deals” neutered their powers, and the district sued the company in state court in Orlando to have the contracts voided. Disney has filed counterclaims, which include asking the state court to declare the agreements valid and enforceable.

Disney also has sued DeSantis, a state agency and DeSantis appointees on the district’s board in federal court in Tallahassee, saying the company’s free speech rights were violated when the governor and Republican lawmakers targeted it for expressing opposition to the law dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by its critics.

In an earnings report last week, Disney noted that while its theme parks worldwide had a year-to-year increase in operating income, it had decreased at the Florida theme park resort due to costs related to the closure of its immersive Star Wars-themed two-night experience and lower visitor spending from a decrease in hotel rates.

Prices for consumers are growing at a slower pace, the U.S. government reported Tuesday morning, as overall prices in October were the same as what consumers paid in September.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says prices in October were unchanged as gasoline prices declined and shelter costs continued to rise. Its Consumer Price Index rose 3.2% compared to a year ago, the latest sign that inflation is slowing down as interest rates rise and the job market gives up some of the strength it has shown in the last few years.

The CPI results were about equal to what experts had expected. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal had projected an 0.1% increase in prices compared to September, and 3.2% from October 2022.

Core prices, which exclude food and energy prices because they can be highly volatile, rose 4% compared to October 2022. The BLS said that was the slowest pace of growth it has recorded since September 2021.

The BLS said that compared to a year ago, food prices climbed 3.3% and shelter costs rose 6.7%. The price of used cars and trucks fell 7.1%, continuing a long decline after those prices had spiked in the early stages of the pandemic.

Gasoline prices were down 5.3% from a year ago, which contributed to an overall drop in energy costs.

‘The usual trouble spots — shelter, motor vehicle insurance, and personal care — still remain,’ wrote Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate. ‘Shelter has accounted for 70% of the increase in core prices over the past year and offset the 5% decline in gasoline prices during October.”

While more apartments are being built, McBride says that’s not showing up in rents right now.

The report will be a major factor in the Federal Reserve’s next decision on interest rates in December. Stocks rose Tuesday morning, as investors concluded that the report makes it more likely that the Fed is done raising interest rates for the time being.

At 9:46 a.m. ET, the benchmark S&P 500 index rose 1.6% and the tech stock-heavy Nasdaq composite rose 2.1%.

Higher interest rates tend to slow down the economy and cut into profits for most businesses, so relatively lower rates are seen as better for stocks. Higher rates on bonds are a more appealing investment relative to stocks because their payments increase when rates do.

The central U.S. bank will meet for the final time this year Dec. 12 and 13. It left rates alone in September and October after a series of steep increases throughout 2022 and early this year.

Officials including Fed Chair Jerome Powell have suggested that the central bank is comfortable with the progress it has made in reducing inflation so far. U.S. inflation peaked at 9.1% annually in June 2022, so it has slowed significantly even though it remains well above the 2% rate the Fed says it wants to achieve.

In September, overall prices rose 0.2% from August, and CPI was up 3.7% over the previous 12 months.

Even as Home Depot forecast sales declines, the retailer had good news for investors and consumers on Tuesday.

“I think the most important observation we’ve made is that the worst of the inflationary environment is behind us,” Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said on an earnings call.

Shares of the retailer rose by nearly 6% in early trading after the company beat quarterly earnings expectations, driving a rally for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company’s comments also came as federal data on Tuesday morning showed that inflation was flat in October from the prior month.

Home Depot kicked off a much-anticipated week of retail earnings that includes other household names, such as Walmart, Target and Macy’s. All of the retailers have struggled with consumers who have become more selective about spending, particularly on pricier and discretionary items, as they pay more for necessities like groceries.

Home Depot is no exception. For multiple quarters, its customers have bought fewer big-ticket items and taken on smaller, less expensive projects.

Yet with its comments on Tuesday, Home Depot gave fresh hope that consumers and the broader economy could soon see relief. In the short term, cooling inflation reduces sales numbers for retailers, including Home Depot. Yet long term, if prices level off or even start to drop, it can free up extra money that shoppers can spend elsewhere.

Plus, cooling inflation could speed along the end of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. The central bank has been trying to tame decades-high price increases without tipping the economy into a recession.

Still, Michael Baker, a retail analyst for D.A. Davidson, said relief won’t come soon enough for the holiday season. He expects modest sales growth for retailers.

 “Less inflation can invite back in some discretionary spending, but that’s offset by the fact it’s generally a pretty soft spending environment,” he said.

At Home Depot, McPhail has described 2023 as “a year of moderation” after the boom in home improvement during the Covid pandemic. The retailer predicts a drop in sales from last year.

Yet the normalization of other trends has brought predictability for the business and customers, he said.

“Some prices are settling at levels higher than 2022,” McPhail said. “Others are settling lower. But we’re seeing some stabilization there.”

Appliances, which sometimes requires months-long wait times, are back in stock. Those healthier inventory levels have lifted sales in the category, said Billy Bastek, executive vice president of merchandising, on the earnings call.

Yet some factors that drive inflation are beyond retailers’ control and influence consumers’ decisions, too.

Just take the cost of painting a living room, CEO Ted Decker said on the earnings call. He said Home Depot remains focused on offering low prices. But, he added, it’s backed off on the kinds of promotions that don’t make a difference.

He said cutting the price of paint by $10 doesn’t put a dent in the bigger cost: Paying the painters.

If the federal government shuts down Saturday, numerous publicly funded agencies will stop work and their employees won’t be paid, but Social Security checks will still go out.

Social Security is considered a mandatory program, and it isn’t funded by the shorter-term appropriations bills passed by Congress and signed by the president. That means its operations and funding don’t stop when the government shuts down.

That’s important for a large proportion of Americans, as about 67 million people receive monthly Social Security benefits, according to the Social Security Administration. Those benefits go primarily to retirees but also to people with disabilities, as well as dependents of deceased beneficiaries. 

Medicare and Veterans Affairs benefits also continue to be distributed during a shutdown.

The federal government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. ET Saturday if Congress does not pass a bill to provide more funding. The GOP has a narrow majority in the House, and a group of hard-line conservatives is holding out from the rest of Republicans and demanding deep cuts in government spending.

President Joe Biden and the Democrats, who control the Senate, oppose those cuts.

Follow live updates on the government shutdown bill vote

In the event of a shutdown, “nonessential” actions would stop, and 4 million federal employees would not receive paychecks.

Some, including members of the military, would work without pay and would receive back pay later on, after a new funding bill is passed and signed into law. Other federal employees would be furloughed and would not report to work.

And a shutdown would stop many other federal programs and services. The Biden administration said in September, when a shutdown looked likely, that the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, would stop operating one or two days into a shutdown. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that some states might be able to keep their programs running a bit longer than that.

WIC is a program intended to help low-income pregnant and postpartum women, as well as children under age 5, access healthier food. According to the Agriculture Department, more than 6 million people received WIC benefits each month in 2022, including about 39% of all U.S. infants.

A long shutdown could harm the economy, as well. The longest shutdown lasted for 35 days, from Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan. 25, 2019, and the Congressional Budget Office estimated that it cost the U.S. economy at least $11 billion directly, with indirect costs that were harder to quantify.

A government shutdown should not be confused with a debt ceiling standoff. The U.S. reached its borrowing limit, called the debt ceiling, earlier this year. That standoff could have prevented Social Security checks from going out had it lasted long enough, but after a protracted impasse, congressional Republicans and Democrats agreed on a deal to prevent it.

Banks on the payment app Zelle have begun refunding victims of imposter scams to address consumer protection concerns raised by U.S. lawmakers and the federal consumer watchdog, in a major policy change.

The 2,100 financial firms on Zelle, a peer-to-peer network owned by seven banks including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, began reversing transfers as of June 30 for customers duped into sending money to scammers claiming to be from a government agency, bank or existing service provider, said Early Warning Services (EWS), the banks’ company that owns Zelle.

That’s “well above existing legal and regulatory requirements,” Ben Chance, chief fraud risk officer at EWS, told Reuters.

Federal rules require banks to reimburse customers for payments made without their authorization, such as by hackers, but not when customers themselves make the transfer.

While Zelle disclosed Aug. 30 that it had introduced a new reimbursement benefit for “specific scam types,” it has not previously provided details on its new imposter scam refund policy due to worries doing so might encourage criminals to make false scam claims, a spokesperson said.

The new policy marks a major shift from last year when bankers, including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, told lawmakers worried about rising scams that it was unreasonable to require banks to refund transfers that customers were tricked into approving.

Following its launch in 2017, Zelle grew to become one of the largest U.S. peer-to-peer payments networks by total payments. A March 2022 New York Times report that scams were flourishing on Zelle caught the attention of lawmakers frequently critical of big banks, including Senator Elizabeth Warren.

She and other lawmakers started an investigation, estimating that Zelle users had lost $440 million to all types of fraud in 2021 alone. During a Senate hearing last year, Warren told Dimon and other bank CEOs that they had created a “perfect weapon” for criminals but had not stood by their customers. More than 100 million people, all with U.S. bank accounts, have access to Zelle, according to EWS.

Impersonator fraud was the most-reported scam in 2022 across all payment methods in the U.S., accounting for $2.6 billion in losses, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Banks worry that covering the cost of authorized transactions will encourage more fraud and put them on the hook for potentially billions of dollars. Instead of requiring lenders to reimburse customers, EWS has implemented a mechanism that allows banks to claw back funds from the recipient’s account and return them to the sender, said Chance.

Lenders on Zelle are also now required to implement a tool that flags transfers with risky attributes, such as a payment to an account that has never transacted on the Zelle network, said Chance. He said Zelle has seen “a step-change reduction” in fraud and scam rates this year but declined to provide details.

“We have had a strong set of controls since the launch of the network, and as part of our journey we have continued to evolve those controls… to keep pace with what we see is going on in the marketplace,” he said.

Chance said EWS has been engaging with policymakers on the need for a “holistic approach” to combating scams, including advocating for more dedicated law enforcement resources.

Under pressure from Warren and other lawmakers, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) considered compelling lenders to reimburse scams, but Zelle’s changes have so far satisfied the agency, said a person familiar with the matter.

A CFPB spokesperson declined to comment on Zelle or potential rule changes, but said the agency is working to protect customers “including by ensuring that financial institutions are living up to their investigation and error-resolution obligations.”

JPMorgan, Bank of America and Zelle’s five other owner banks declined to comment.

“Zelle’s platform changes are long overdue,” said Warren in a statement to Reuters. “The CFPB is standing with consumers, and I urge the agency to keep the pressure on Zelle to protect consumers from bad actors.”

Zelle has long argued its fraud and scam rates are low.

It processed $629 billion worth of payments in 2022, according to the network, with 99.9% of transfers made without a fraud or scam report.

It competes with other peer-to-peer payment platforms like PayPal and Venmo that review situations case-by-case and have a purchase-protection program for eligible transactions that covers scams. Experts note that it is difficult to compare fraud and scam rates across platforms because classifications vary.

Zelle’s u-turn shows how banks are feeling competitive pressure to step up the “market standard of care”, said Trace Fooshee, a strategic advisor at Datos Insights.

Still, regulations mandating imposter fraud protections would be better for customers since lenders’ policies may be unclear or they may not follow them as promised, said Carla Sanchez-Adams, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.

“The one thing that I think is problematic is that the consumer really wouldn’t know that they have that option, and if they do know, and if the bank fails to reimburse them, there is no private remedy,” she said, noting Zelle’s policy change was nevertheless a “good first step.”

Payment fraud is expected to come up again when bank CEOs appear before the Senate next month, according to industry experts. This time, they believe they have a good story to tell.

“The banks through Zelle — without regulation, without legislation — have actually proactively gone and said, we’re going to make sure that we are… trying to address any kind of consumer issue or harm,” said Lindsey Johnson, CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association.

The U.S. government will release its latest report on consumer prices Tuesday morning, and experts think it will show that inflation is continuing to slow down.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal think the Bureau of Labor Statistics report will show that prices rose 0.1% compared to September, and 3.3% compared to October 2022.

Core prices, which exclude food and energy prices because they can be highly volatile, are expected to rise 0.3% from September, and 4.1% compared to October 2022.

In September, overall prices rose 0.2% from the month before, and 3.7% over the previous 12 months.

The report will be a major factor in the Federal Reserve’s next decision on interest rates. The central U.S. bank will meet for the final time this year Dec. 12 and 13.

Based on options market data, the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool predicts the Fed will leave interest rates where they are, in the range of 5.25% to 5.5%. The central bank also left rates alone in September and October after a series of steep increases throughout 2022 and early this year.

EY Chief Economist Gregory Daco wrote last week that overall prices may have even decreased slightly from September to October compared to the month before because gasoline prices fell sharply.

‘A moderate 0.3% m/m in core CPI (excluding food and energy) was offset by a significant 3% decline in energy prices driven by a plunge in gasoline prices,’ he said.

Officials including Fed Chair Jerome Powell have suggested that the central bank is comfortable with the progress it has made in reducing inflation so far. U.S. inflation peaked at 9.1% annually in June 2022, so it has slowed significantly even though it remains well above the 2% rate the Fed says it wants to achieve.

Americans are starting to feel like shoplifting is becoming an epidemic.

It’s becoming a mainstream worry that is contributing to fears about crime and the fate of major cities. New York City is experimenting with new ways to address shoplifting, for example, as complaints of stealing from retailers reportedly increased 77% from 2017 to 2022.

In October, former President Donald Trump said he would support shooting shoplifters, an indication that he sees those fears as a political asset.

To hear some retailers explain it, an outbreak of shoplifting, and especially “organized retail theft,” where merchandise is stolen en masse and resold online, is forcing them to close some stores and lock up merchandise elsewhere.

“We are living in a nation where stealing is no longer considered a crime, and those stealing are not criminals,” David Johnston, the vice president of asset protection and retail operations for the Washington, D.C.-based National Retail Federation, wrote in September.

But for all of the extreme statements, it’s hard to tell if there has really been a notable increase in shoplifting nationwide. Law enforcement often does not distinguish between theft from retailers and other kinds of robbery.

The broad category of larceny, however, is lower than it was before the pandemic. The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, says larceny fell 7% in the first half of 2023 compared to the same time period in 2019.

Dylan Carden and Phillip Blee, two analysts for the financial services firm William Blair & Co., say that on a national level, it looks like theft and other forms of inventory loss — which retailers call “shrink” — are just returning to normal after they fell to unusually low levels in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic.

But what’s happening in individual cities can be very different from a national average, and the NRF has said its members are indeed reporting more theft. Along with other retailer groups, it spent the last couple of years focusing on organized retail theft specifically.

The group points to surveys of its members to show that theft is rising. That survey data can’t be easily verified, but even so, it shows the increase in overall theft has been less dramatic than the words the NRF is using to describe the situation.

Still, its lobbying efforts resulted in a federal law that requires online sales platforms to collect and disclose some sellers’ identities. This is meant to deter the sale of stolen goods online. Some states have passed similar laws.

Now, the NRF and other groups are backing a new law that would impose harsher sentences for theft and make it easier to bring federal theft charges. Retailers say that will deter thieves, but critics argue it’s reminiscent of the government’s 1970s-era approach to combating illegal drugs, the hallmark of which featured heavy-handed policing tactics that led to mass incarceration.

Journalists have pointed out that some of the stores being closed by companies like Target do not seem to be the same stores that have experienced the most shoplifting. On the other hand, not all shoplifting is reported, and the effects of an increase in theft could be complex.

There are other factors that could contribute to greater shrink. For one, stores have generally cut back on staff, which can create more opportunities for theft. They also discourage employees from getting involved when they see someone stealing.

There’s also the increasing prevalence of self-checkout kiosks, which also create an opportunity to steal — or might push law-abiding customers to give up on a malfunctioning scanner and walk out of the store.

Carden and Blee say that shoplifting, especially “organized” stealing of items that are later flipped online, seems to have increased somewhat. And they agree that retailers may not have a lot of options. Many of them are choosing to lock up merchandise even though it costs them sales when customers choose to shop elsewhere, or give up on trying to find an employee to retrieve the items they need.

Even with that in mind, they say there are indications that companies are overstating the problem, and that in some cases, they are doing so to distract from their own mistakes.

In a report published in October, Carden and Blee wrote that even though theft is “likely elevated,” retailers could be using that to pull attention away from recent internal struggles that have hurt their businesses, like inventory problems or an overreliance on price cuts to boost sales.

“We also believe some more recent permanent store closures enacted under the cover of shrink relate to underperformance of these locations,” they said.

They added that company employees at distribution centers have more opportunities to steal merchandise than people inside stores, and those thefts are harder to trace — even though they are less dramatic than cellphone footage of “smash and grab” robberies.

“I don’t think you’ll ever hear a company tell you that employee theft is higher,” Blee told NBC News in an interview. He said stores rarely talk about that kind of theft because it makes them look like they’ve hired the wrong people and failed to keep track of their own merchandise.

Neil Saunders, the managing director at the consulting company GlobalData, told NBC News that theft has been growing, but store closures are rarely the result of theft alone, no matter what retailers may say. And because companies don’t disclose many details around shrink, there is speculation that they use it to cover for their own errors.

“In some ways, theft is a great excuse as it absolves a retailer of any responsibility as theft is somewhat outside of their control,” Saunders wrote in an email. “I don’t think anyone denies the problem of theft, it’s just that a lot more transparency and nuance is needed in the discussion.”

Vince McMahon plans to sell a substantial chunk of his stake in TKO, the parent company of WWE, the wrestling empire founded by his father, TKO said in a release Thursday

TKO’s stock fell 5% after the closing bell Thursday. The stock closed at $84.90 during regular trading.

McMahon intends to sell 8.4 million of his shares, worth about $700 million. He owned more than 28 million shares as of August, according to a regulatory filing. The company said it and several executives are looking to buy shares from McMahon. The longtime wrestling honcho has a net worth of $2.8 billion, according to Forbes.

The move could be an indication that McMahon, 78, plans to get out of his family business, which has been the dominant player in professional wrestling for about four decades, launching the careers of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Cena and many other crossover stars.

Earlier this year, WWE merged with UFC to form TKO, which is majority owned by Endeavor Group, the talent agency and media company run by Ari Emanuel.

McMahon is executive chairman of TKO. In August, WWE said he was served with a federal grand jury subpoena related to allegations that he paid millions of dollars in hush money to women who accused him of sexual misconduct. He said at the time he has “always denied any intentional wrongdoing and continue to do so.”

He also went on medical leave in July after he had spinal surgery.

Endeavor, meanwhile, is exploring strategic alternatives as its market value hasn’t lived up to expectations since it went public in 2021. Endeavor’s biggest shareholder, investment firm Silver Lake, said it could take the company private.

It’s becoming harder to enter the U.S. housing market, but for those who have managed to get in, the benefits have often been huge.

Investing experts have long said that one of the best reasons to buy real estate is that it keeps more of its value than other investments, like stocks, when inflation gets high.

That’s been true during the inflation spike of the last two years. The Federal Reserve reports that the median value of a house, meaning the value of the house minus loans against it, such as mortgages, jumped 44% between 2019 and 2022. The Fed considered only primary residences in that analysis.

Largely for that reason, the median net worth of U.S. homeowners was $396,000 at the end of 2022, compared to $10,000 for renters.

The S&P 500 index rose about 32% from the end of 2019 to the end of 2022, not counting dividends paid by index companies. That’s also strong performance. But stocks have been more volatile, in part because their performance is closely linked to factors like corporate profits and investors’ views about the future of the economy.

“In a low-growth, high-inflationary environment, real estate is a very, very strong investment,” said Jamie Battmer. He is the chief investment officer at Creative Planning, a wealth management and financial advice firm that works with clients who have nearly a quarter-trillion dollars in combined wealth.

He adds that even in a backdrop like today’s, where growth is solid and inflation is elevated but not as high as it was a year ago, real estate tends to do well compared to stocks and bonds.

The steep increase in home values also means the housing market is becoming a bigger and bigger contributor to wealth inequality.

It’s such a powerful tool for creating wealth, even in bad times, that financial experts tell NBC News they’re advising clients to strongly consider buying a home even with prices at all-time highs and mortgage rates at two-decade highs.

“The perception people have is that it’s a bad time to buy given the level of prices as well as interest rates,” said Jason Obradovich, chief investment officer at New American Funding. But he said that’s not necessarily true. One reason is that if mortgage rates decrease, prices will probably rise in response.

“We haven’t had a ton of inflation, and yet real estate prices have climbed a lot,” Obradovich said.

The annual rate of inflation in 1980 was just over 14%. Mortgage interest rates that same year topped 16%.

“Interest rates have been coming down for about 40 straight years, and that obviously pushed up the value of real estate because people can afford a much larger payment.”

Obradovich says lower interest rates are inevitable because the Fed knows the U.S. economy requires it in order to achieve any kind of growth.

“When rates come down, you have the ability to refinance at a much lower rate,” he said.

When rates come down, prices are likely to go up again because it will be less costly to take out a mortgage. That means — for those who can afford it — it could be better to buy now than to wait.

“If you rent, it will probably always go up,” he said, referring to the cost of renting.

Obradovich and Battmer both made a similar point about the role a home can have in a person’s long-term finances. For many people, they both said, a house becomes a kind of forced retirement savings account. Every time they make a mortgage payment, they gain equity in the house, and the longer people own their homes, and the longer that prices rise, the more value they can get by taking out a home equity loan or borrowing against the value of their house.

“The great American dream of home ownership is still alive and well and a key element of what just drives wealth for your average household,” Battmer said.