Intuit is nearing a $7 billion deal to buy Credit Karma, a San Francisco-based provider of consumer credit-score checks and monitoring services, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Why it matters: The combined company would hold a staggering amount of personal financial information. For consumers, that means much better recommendations and much bigger privacy concerns.

Agriculture giant Cargill will begin producing plant-based patties and ground "fake meat" products in April, the company announced Monday.

Why it matters: Cargill, one of the largest privately held companies in the U.S., presents new competition for startups Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods alongside meat giant Tyson Foods, which is rolling out its own plant-based products, Axios' Rashaan Ayesh reports.

Trading volume at online and discount brokers like TD Ameritrade and the recently acquired E*Trade has exploded over the past year, Bloomberg reports, with TD Ameritrade alone having seen million-trade days multiplying at a "record pace."

What's happening: So-called mom and pop retail investors are chasing the U.S. bull market via online brokerages, thanks largely to top brokerage firms cutting trading fees to zero.

The U.S. Treasury yield curve inverted again, with 3-month Treasury bills holding a higher yield (1.56%) than 10-year Treasury notes (1.46%).

The big picture: This is the second time the yield curve has inverted in a matter of weeks, and the third time in a matter of months. It's the deepest the yield curve has been inverted since Oct. 9.

The U.S. economy has taken a significant hit so far in February, due in part to the coronavirus outbreak.

By the numbers: The all-important U.S. services sector contracted for the first time in four years, data released Friday from IHS Markit showed, and fell to its lowest level in more than six years.