Something for the weekend.
(Bloomberg) — Weekend greetings from New York City. Our city continues to reckon with the overload of motor vehicles—and increasingly, brick-and-mortar shops are embracing car-free business zones for walkers and bikers, like the one installed recently in the city’s beating heart of Broadway. Your dutiful newsletter writer took a spin this week in the bike-and-pedestrian area just south of Times Square. Pleasant, lively, tons of foot traffic, though best to go slowly given that tourists wander into bike lanes like tipsy ducklings. Not everyone’s a fan of car-reduction plans: New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said this week he’s lawyered up to stop congestion pricing in central Manhattan, which may cost drivers (including his commuter voters) $23 to enter.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met with Chinese leaders in Beijing for a second day, saying the two nations should communicate “directly” on specific economic concerns and that there’s “ample room” for trade and investment. Pushing for better ties amid deepened tensions, she told her Chinese counterpart Vice Premier He Lifeng that “a wide swath of our economies can interact in ways that are uncontroversial to both governments.” She said earlier in the day that China and the US should join forces to tackle climate change.
Bad news, stock bulls: Traders who had spent the first half of the year doubting the rally are finally giving up. They’re unwinding shorts in S&P 500 futures at the fastest pace since 2020. And their furious buying to cover short positions, which helped magnify every leg up, is fading. Now the market has one fewer accelerant even as concerns grow that the Federal Reserve will need to keep hiking rates to battle inflation.A solid employment report with stronger-than-expected wage growth for June keeps the Federal Reserve on track to raise interest rates this month and mull another hike as soon as September. “Overall, the job market is outstanding, and is getting back to a balanced, sustainable level,” Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said Friday.
Worried that the dreaded inversion of the Treasury yield curve will lay out traps for your bond portfolio in the coming months? Perhaps worry less. So say quant researchers at Boston-based NDVR after slicing and dicing around 100 years of history in the world’s largest debt market.
Big cities like New York have two real estate problems. Housing is scarce and office buildings are empty. So there would seem to be an obvious solution: Turn the offices into homes. But it’s very hard. The Odd Lots podcast speaks with Joey Chilelli, managing director at the Vanbarton Group, a firm that’s been involved with these office-to-housing projects for a decade.
Will AI in baseball become the next moneyball?, Adam Minter asks in Bloomberg Opinion. Major League pitchers are throwing out their shoulders almost as much as they’re throwing fastballs, but with a couple of iPhones and a tripod, the league could use AI to slow the growing rate of injuries. This simple technology, however, runs the risk of digging the MLB into another hole.
Barbie, with her bombshell looks and high-flying jobs, once filled a cultural vacuum. She became an icon and also a lightning rod. Now she’s at the center of a huge bet by Mattel to revive its fortunes. With the new Barbie movie, there are signs the gamble may work: Viral paparazzi pictures of Barbie stars filming on Venice Beach last year sparked a Barbiecore pink fashion craze, and the movie’s trailers have been parsed on social media with the intensity of a postfeminist graduate course.
We’re tracking breaking news for you this Saturday, and look for us tomorrow with a rundown of your week ahead.
–With assistance from Magdalena Del Valle.
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