Wall Street’s post-tariff-delay jubilance was short lived, as an inverted bond yield curve reared its ugly head yesterday, sending shares plummeting on a brutal day across all markets – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and Marketplace
Here’s the skinny on why an inverted yield curve is such a big deal – WSJ and Bloomberg
And what, based on history, it may portend – MarketWatch
Oh yeah, and economic woes from around the world—Germany and China, included—didn’t help the cause – NYTimes and WSJ
For its part, China has promised to retaliate for the newest U.S. tariff threat (even if delayed), suggesting that we could be in for another long day – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
Shared office-space giant WeWork “officially set in motion the process of becoming a publicly traded company” this week by filing a financial prospectus with federal authorities. WeWork was valued at nearly $50 billion at its last funding round, though it “lost more than $1.6 billion last year on just $1.8 billion in revenue” – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
Alibaba co-founder Joseph Tsai (the Paul Allen to Jack Ma’s Bill Gates, if you well), is closing in on a “record-breaking deal to gain sole ownership” of the New Jersey Nets, a transaction that would “set a record for the purchase price of a sports franchise” – NYTimes and MarketWatch
Meanwhile, Warren Buffet pushed even deeper in to Amazon, taking full billion dollar stake (or 11%) in Bezos’ empire – Bloomberg
FCC Chair Ajit Pai has put forward a proposal to approve the Sprint/T-Mobile merger that will now go to the full Commission for a vote – Law360
Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos has a new project: General Electric. Markopolos, the accounting expert who “warned securities regulators” about Madoff alleges that GE has “masked the depths of its problems, resulting in inaccurate and fraudulent filings with regulators” – WSJ
We’re keeping an eye on rising repo rates—the “cost to borrow cash using Treasurys as collateral”—as a potentially troubling red flag in this current era of ever-widening budget deficits – WSJ
Some hard but essential reflection from the Times’ 1619 project on the roots of American capitalism in slavery – NYTimes
