The stock market has inched its way to one record high after another this year, with the S&P 500 gaining a solid if unspectacular 3.5 percent so far. That rise has enriched investors by some $900 billion in 2015, as Matt Krantz at USA Today points out.

As Krantz also notes, though, some shareholders have done far, far better than the broader market. Jeff Bezos, for example.

The Amazon CEO has benefitted from a 40 percent rise in his company’s stock in 2015, adding a whopping $9.5 billion in paper gains to his already sizable net worth to lift it to $38.2 billion, good enough for 11^th highest in the world, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

Related: 7 Quirky Economic Indicators – from Dogs to Guns​

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As well as Bezos has done, four foreign billionaires have actually made more in 2015: Pan Sutong, chairman of Hong Kong investment conglomerate Goldin Group, has made more than $20 billion; Wang Jianlin, the founder and chairman of another Chinese conglomerate, Dalian Wanda, has made $19.4 billion; Zhou Qunfei, China’s richest woman, has added nearly $11 billion; and Patrick Drahi, the French chairman and largest shareholder of Luxembourg-based telecom company Altice, has gained $9.7 billion.

Bezos may be far ahead of the U.S. pack, but the USA Today analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ shows some other CEOs of American companies have fared extremely well as a result of their stock holdings, too. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has made more than $1 billion on paper, while Google’s Larry Page has gained just under $1 billion. And as shares of drugstore chain Walgreens Boots Alliance have surged more than 11 percent this year, acting CEO Stefano Pessina has profited to the tune of $645.6 million. The CEOs of salesforce.com, Under Armour, Starbucks, Mohawk Industries, Constellation Brands and Netflix have all seen paper gains of more than $260 million so far in 2015.

You can see USA Today’s full list here. 

In the history of sudden wealth loss, Li Hejun may have set a new record.

Li, who was China's richest man until this week, saw his fortune drop by as much as $15 billion in a half-hour as the stock in his company, Hanergy Thin Film Power Group, fell by nearly half. Trading in the shares was halted Wednesday and Li didn't attend the company's annual meeting.

While plenty of billionaires have seen their fortunes cut in half over time, few if any have seen $15 billion wiped out in a half-hour. Li's total fortune was around $30 billion before the stock plunged.

Prior to the drop, the company's shares had risen by more than fivefold since September, baffling analysts. Reuters reports that Hong Kong regulators are looking at alleged market manipulation with the stock.

Related: America’s Highest Paid CEO: It’s Not Who You Think

In a similar wealth decline, Hong Kong property and electronics magnate Pan Sutong has lost more than $11 billion this week as shares of two listed companies, Goldin Financial and Goldin Property, both closed down more than 40 percent.

Pan owns around 65 percent of Goldin Property and more than 70 percent of Goldin Financial, according to filings. His fortune was listed at more than $28 billion, making him Hong Kong's second-richest man.

That means that the two men have lost more in one day that the total net worth of Carl Icahn, Steve Ballmer or Michael Dell.

Pan is known for his large lifestyle. He's a big polo supporter and has sponsored a polo event in Britain attended by Princes William and Harry. He's said that the sport "is a way of life and belief in a sense of nobility."

Pan also owns vineyards around the world, including three in France and one in California's Napa Valley, called the Sloan Estate, which he purchased in 2011 for around $40 million.

This article originally appeared on CNBC
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Nothing gets under the skin of a savvy consumer like unwarranted and unwanted fees.

The Web site GoBankingRates.com has put together a list of the “31 Worst Fees in America,” listing some of the most egregious fees out there, as well as tips on two avoid them. The list includes 11 banking fees, 10 travel fees, and handful of fees from other categories such as health care and cell phones.

“At the bank, while traveling, or just when going about your daily business, fees are on the rise in seemingly all industries—and not just in quantity, but in price,” writes author Paul Sisolak. “Many times, they’re so well obscured that you end up paying fees without realizing it.”

The good news is that in most cases, there’s an easy fix for the fees: Avoid bank teller fees, for example, by using remote deposit and ATMs; and steer clear of ATM fees by using your bank’s app to find the nearest in-network machine.

Related: 10 Infuriating Consumer Fees to Stop Paying Now

While bank fees may be rising, the institutions are getting better about being transparent in disclosing them. More than 60 percent of the banks reviewed last week by The Pew Charitable Trusts have adopted a summary disclosure box of terms and fees that meets the organization’s standards, up from just 25 percent in 2013.

When it comes to avoiding fees while traveling, pack light to avoid overweight bag charges and call ahead of time to get a sense of Wi-Fi and other hotel/resort fees.

The president’s healthcare law sliced America’s uninsured rate down to historic lows by expanding coverage for tens of millions of Americans. At the same time, however, the number of insured people who still lack affordable, robust coverage is rising sharply as more people buy into high-deductible policies.

A new study from the Commonwealth Fund reveals that about 23 percent of Americans with coverage are considered underinsured—up from 12 percent in 2003. That means roughly 31 million Americans who bought health insurance still have trouble affording treatment under their policies.

The researchers at the Commonwealth Fund defined “underinsured” people as having out-of-pocket costs that total 10 percent or more of their annual income, or a deductible that is 5 percent or more of their income. The study concluded that high-deductible policies are likely the culprit behind this massive influx of underinsured people.

The findings are a huge problem for the Obama administration since the entire goal was to expand access to coverage to millions of Americans that they presumably would use instead of delaying treatment. But a handful of recent studies show that even people with health insurance are delaying treatment because they can’t afford it.

Related: High Deductible Plans Have More People Delaying Treatment

A December Gallup Poll showed at least 38 percent of insured, middle-income people, said they had delayed medical treatment because of the cost. “While many Americans have gained insurance, there has been no downturn in the percentage who say they have had to put off needed medical treatment because of cost,” Gallup’s Rebecca Riffkin wrote in a post on the pollster’s website.

The shift toward cost-sharing and high-deductible policies—defined by the Internal Revenue Service as those with annual deductibles of $1,300 or more for individuals and $2,600 for families--is widespread among exchange policies but also employer plans.

The Commonwealth Foundation’s study, unsurprisingly, reveals that low-income people with coverage are about twice as likely to be “underinsured” than people earning more than 200 percent of the poverty line.

Of course, it’s important to note that while affordability continues to be an issue, significantly more people do have health insurance because of the law. 

As credit card fraud has skyrocketed, issuers suspecting suspicious activity have become increasingly vigilant – sometime maybe too vigilant.

In many cases, fraud alerts are preventing consumers from making legitimate purchases. More than two-thirds of Americans who have received a fraudulent activity alert from their credit or debit card issuers have received at least one that’s inaccurate, according to a new study from CreditCards.com.

Still, card issuers have good reason to be cautious. This week, credit card scoring and analytics firm FICO said that the number of attacks on debit cards used at ATMs hit the highest level in 20 years during the first quarter of 2014

Related: How to Beat Credit and Debit Card ID Thieves

Americans remain extremely concerned about their personal data when shopping in stores, so many accept the inaccurate fraud alerts as a necessary hassle. “Most consumers we have spoken with seem to be okay with this trend,” CreditCards.com senior industry analyst Matt Schulz said in a statement.

You can avoid having your card blocked from legitimate purchases by calling your issuer or visiting their Web site to let them know you’ll be traveling, since purchases made from a new geographic area often send a red flag to card companies. Some issuers also offer text message alerts, so you can quickly and easily unblock a card for your transactions.

If you think you’ve been a victim of fraud (or if your cards have been physically lost or stolen), call your issuer immediately – most have 24/7 call centers dedicated to fraud.

Donors who have given money to four of the largest cancer charities in the United States may have unknowingly been financing the  lavish lifestyle of the C.E.O. who runs them—paying for luxury cruises, elite gym memberships instead of treatment for cancer patients. 

That’s according to a suit filed Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission as well as attorneys general in all 50 states, which alleges that James Reynolds deceived and defrauded donors out of more than $187 million between four of his charities—including the Cancer Fund of America, Cancer Support Services, Children’s Cancer Fund of America and the Breast Cancer Society. 

Related: Medicare Recovers Nearly $28 Billion in Fraud Since 1997

The complaint says that the scheme started in the 1980’s. The charities told donors via telemarketing calls that their money would go toward medicine and transportation for cancer patients. However, most of the money actually went toward Reynolds’ personal indulges. 

The complaint says that between 2008 and 2012, only three percent of donations actually went to cancer patients. 

The FTC also accuses the organizations of cooking their books and reporting inflated revenues as well as “gifts in kind” that they said they distributed internationally. 

The FTC said two of the charities—the Children’s Cancer Fund of America and the Breast Cancer Society plan to settle the charges out of court. The Associated Press reported that the Breast Cancer Society, posted a statement on its website Tuesday blaming increased government scrutiny for the charity's downfall. 

"While the organization, its officers and directors have not been found guilty of any allegations of wrongdoing, and the government has not proven otherwise, our board of directors has decided that it does not help those who we seek to serve, and those who remain in need, for us to engage in a highly publicized, expensive, and distracting legal battle around our fundraising practices," the statement said. 

Several executives who were also involved in the sccheme, including Reynolds’ son, have agreed to a settlement, which bans them from working in fundraising or charities. The two charities that settled, Breast Cancer Society and the Children’ Cancer Fund of America will be dissolved. 

The settlement also orders a $65,664,360 judgment, which is the amount consumers donated between 2008 and 2012. Reynolds junior’s judgment will be for suspended once he pays $75,000. Meanwhile the legal proceedings for Reynolds’ senior and the two remaining charities are ongoing.

A Supreme Court ruling expected this summer will determine whether the federal government can subsidize the insurance costs of individuals in states that did not establish their own health care exchanges under the Affordable Care Act.

Douglas Elmendorf was the director of the Congressional Budget Office when Congress debated the bill, and on Tuesday he provided some ammunition to backers of the law who insist that that Congress did not intend to prevent payments of subsidies to consumers in states using the federal exchange.

Related: How Obamacare Could Be Squeezing Consumer Spending​​

In an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s 2015 Fiscal Summit*, Elmendorf said that before the ACA passed, the CBO analyzed the bill for members of Congress, many of whom were powerfully opposed to it. At the time, he said, there was a common understanding on Capitol Hill that the subsidies would be available to states regardless of the status of their exchanges.

“That analysis was subject to a lot of very intense scrutiny and a lot of questions,” he said. “My colleagues and I can remember no occasion on which anybody asked why we were expecting subsidies to be paid in all states regardless of whether they established exchanges or not. And if people had not had this common understanding…then I’m sure we would have had a lot of questions about that.”

Pressed by Harwood, Elmendorf added, “My colleagues and I talked to a lot of people, with a lot of questions about nearly every aspect of the analysis that we did…and we could not remember anybody asking us any questions about what would happen in the federal exchange different from what would happen in the state exchanges.”

Even so, the language of the law states that the subsidies would apply to exchanges “established by the State” and the Supreme Court will decide how literally those words must be interpreted.

*Pete Peterson also funds The Fiscal Times.

Imagine waking up to millions of baby spiders raining down from the heavens. It sounds like   Charlotte’s Web meets Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs – only a whole lot creepier.  

Yet that’s exactly what happened in rural Golburn in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Ian Watson of Golburn told the paper that he looked up and saw a sky full of little black spiderlings and a tunnel of webs going up for hundreds of meters.

Related: The Five Most Dangerous States to Work In

An Australian naturalist said what’s called “ballooning” is a migration technique used by baby spiders, which climb up on a plant and release a streamer of silk web that is caught by the wind and carried away.

Martyn Robinson of the Australian Museum said the traveling spiders can go quite a distance, and that’s why there are spiders on every continent. They even land in Antarctica, he said, though they don’t last long.

Rick Vetter, an arachnologist, told the website LiveScience that "ballooning” is not unusual among certain types of spiders, but people just don’t notice it.

What is unusual, biology professor Todd Blackledge of the University of Akron in Ohio told LiveScience, is for millions of spiders to be blowing in the wind at the same time. He said the mass migration may have been caused by a sudden change in the weather that carried so many spiders aloft all at once.

The Washington Post says other incidents of so called spider rain have occurred recently in Texas, Brazil and another town in Australia.

If you’re reading this while driving, put your phone down right now. This article — as engrossing as it is — will still be here when you reach your destination.

We provide that friendly bit of advice because, as The New York Times reported this morning, a whole bunch of motorists are occupying themselves with their smartphones — and distracting themselves from the road — in ways that go way beyond talking and texting, according to a new survey conducted by Braun Research for AT&T.

The pollsters surveyed 2,067 smartphone users who drive daily, and their findings should be frightening to anyone on the roads. More than six in 10 smartphone users surveyed say they text while driving. It gets scarier: Nearly 40 percent of smartphone users admit to checking in on social media while driving, with 27 percent admitting to using Facebook and another 14 percent saying they use Twitter and Instagram while behind the wheel. Of users who cop to posting on Twitter while driving, 30 percent say they do it “all the time.” Given those figures, it’s amazing that #TwitterAccident isn’t always trending.

Related: Here's How Much Likelier You Are to Be Killed in a Car Than on Amtrak

Some other troubling stats from the survey: 17 percent snap selfies or other pictures when in the driver’s seat and 12 percent shoot videos — with 27 percent of those videographers thinking they can do so safely. Astoundingly, 10 percent of drivers say they video chat while on the roads.

AT&T says it will expand its It Can Wait public service campaign about the dangers of distracted driving, which launched in 2010, to focus on hazards beyond just texting. But as Matt Richtel of the Times points out, the AT&T campaign and other efforts like it face a stiff challenge in trying to counter the social pressures and strongly ingrained habits that keep people constantly checking their phones.

Tough laws and widespread educational efforts have been effective at reducing drunk driving and encouraging use of seat belts. But we still have a way to go in getting drivers to understand that “mobile” doesn’t mean when you’re behind the wheel. Right now, 46 states and the District of Columbia have outlawed texting while driving. As you can see above, that hasn't helped much yet. Smartphone users still need to be convinced of the danger they pose — or face — if they use their devices while driving.

As Lori Lee, AT&T’s global marketing officer, put it: “For the sake of you and those around you, please keep your eyes on the road, not on your phone.”

Consumer Reports in 2013 gave the Telsa Model S the highest rating of any vehicle in its history. This year’s review did not go as well for Elon Musk’s company.

The venerable magazine had to delay testing of the company’s newest model because its drivers couldn’t open the doors on the $127,000 sedan, temporarily making the car “undriveable.”

The door handles on the Model S P85 retract automatically and lay flush against the vehicle when they are not in use. Once the vehicle receives a signal from the key fob, the handles move to allow people to grip them. Unfortunately, the door handles stopped working after Consumer Reports testers had the vehicle for 27 days and had driven just over 2,300 miles.

That malfunction caused other problems, the magazine says: “[S]ignificantly, the car wouldn't stay in Drive, perhaps misinterpreting that the door was open due to the issue with the door handle.”

Consumer Reports’ troubles aren’t unique. The non-profit’s car reliability survey found that the Model S has had a far higher than average number of problems with doors, locks and latches, according to the organization’s website.

The testing experience wasn’t all bad, though, because the automaker’s customer service is top notch. A technician was sent to the Consumer Reports Auto Test Center the morning after the problem was reported and quickly diagnosed the problem.

“Our car needed a new door-handle control module — the part inside the door itself that includes the electronic sensors and motors to operate the door handle and open the door,” Consumer Reports says.  “The whole repair took about two hours and was covered under the warranty.”

Eric Lyman, vice president of industry insights at TrueCar, told The Fiscal Times that the speed in which Tesla addressed that issue will earn it more kudos from customers who have seen carmakers drag their feet in making needed repairs.  The door handle issue isn’t a big deal, he said.

“Telsa is still a relatively new automaker,” he said. “The reality is that we see this kind of thing happen all of the time. This is pretty normal in the course of business in the auto industry.”

The timing of the mishap comes as Telsa is struggling to repair its credibility with Wall Street after the electric vehicle maker’s disappointing earnings performance.  Bloomberg News reported last week that the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company might have to raise money because of what one analyst described as its “eye watering” cash burn rate, or else it might run out of money in the next three quarters.

The electric vehicle maker also is facing increased competition from more established rivals. General Motors (GM), for instance, recently unveiled a Chevrolet Bolt concept car that is set to hit the market in 2017 with a projected price of about $30,000 and a battery range of 200 miles. The next generation Nissan Leaf, another electric vehicle, will hit the market at about the same time.

For now, Tesla’s biggest challenge may in convincing consumers to buy electric vehicles while oil remains cheap.