Millennials aren't the only ones ditching the suburbs for the cities. Some iconic retailers — fighting to stay relevant as Amazon looms — are downsizing and shifting to city centers.
The big picture: As the density of the world's biggest cities keeps increasing, hopping in a car to drive out to a big-box suburban store 8 or 10 miles away is becoming a thing of the past.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 618 points on Wednesday, its best one-day gain since March (per CNBC), while both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite rose over 2% following a highly anticipated speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in New York.
The big picture: There's no single reason for markets' surge, but some market-watchers say investors misinterpreted Powell's comment that interest rates were "just below" the neutral level to mean fewer interest rate hikes were on the horizon.
Margaret Atwood will release a sequel to her novel "The Handmaid's Tale" titled "The Testaments" next September, she announced on Twitter Wednesday morning.
The big picture: The gender-driven political commentary of "The Handmaid's Tale" became an inspiration for women resisting the Trump administration and protesting patriarchal norms. Atwood's publicist told NPR last year that the book had seen a 200% increase in sales since the 2016 presidential election, and its television adaptation won the Emmy for Best Drama Series in 2017, becoming the first show on a streaming service to take home the top prize.
Reality check: The chicken tax did indeed prompt Japanese automakers to open plants on U.S. soil. Since then, of course, Japanese carmakers have made the U.S. their second home, becoming models of efficiency that has been difficult for U.S. carmakers to compete with. But there's no reason to think new tariffs on imported cars would have changed GM's decision. It's not replacing vehicles built at the closed plants with imports; it's eliminating them because no one wants to buy them.
Discovery Inc. signed a deal with Tiger Woods to have him feature exclusive content for a streaming service called GolfTV, which has been dubbed as a "Netflix for Golf," Bloomberg reports.
Why it matters: Woods, a household name in golf, still draws massive ratings while competing in tournaments, despite a decline of golfers in America overall. The streaming service also underlies the $2 billion that Discovery shelled out for a 12-year deal for TV and online rights to the PGA Tour.
An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that 84 farm operations in the upper Midwest filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcy from June 2017 to June 2018.
Why it matters: The number of bankruptcies filed by these farm operations is double the total from 2014 and even surpassed the mark hit in 2010 at the peak of the Great Recession. Current price levels and trends suggest the number will continue to rise, according to the report.
Larry Kudlow, President Trump’s chief economic adviser, said China should be prepared for a massive slate of new tariffs absent a breakthrough in Trump’s meeting at the G20 on Saturday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and it needs to understand that Trump will continue his hardline approach as long as he’s in office.
Why it matters: Trump threatened to raise existing tariffs on China to 25% and impose tariffs on an additional $267 billion in Chinese imports "if we don’t make a deal" in yesterday’s interview with the Wall Street Journal. Kudlow said in a briefing with reporters Tuesday that it’s up to Xi to change Trump’s mind because, "as we’ve all learned, he means what he says." He also insisted that it’s Trump who enters the meeting with the upper hand: "We’re strong, they’re not. From an economic standpoint, I like the position we’re in frankly. I like our negotiating position."
President Trump believes that General Motors "turned their back on him" in announcing layoffs and plant closures, according to top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow.
Why it matters: For Trump, politics is always personal. For GM, this could mean less influence over future policy.
The top 10 most expensive cable affiliate fees in the U.S. last year were all sports channels — mostly regional sports networks (RSNs) — with ESPN being by far the most expensive, per SNL Kagan data provided to Axios.
Adapted from Kagan, a group within S&P Global Market Intelligence; Chart: Axios Visuals
The big picture: They're expensive because the bulk of their content comes from licensing sports rights, which as noted above, are getting more expensive.
Condé Nast's CEO Bob Sauerberg and The Economist's CEO Chris Stibbs are the latest in a string of media company executives stepping down from their positions this year, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Why it matters: It's a hard time to run a media company, particularly a legacy print company, Axios media trends reporter Sara Fischer writes. The pressure to convert from print to digital and then from advertising revenues to subscription revenues has been intense for many legacy outlets and magazines.
Media rights are the biggest sector within the sports industry in North America, according to a new report from PwC. Amid a flurry of increased digital competition for rights, they are expected to be the fastest growing,
Between the lines: More digital streamers, including Big Tech companies and media conglomerates, are vying to win the rights to lucrative sporting events, many of which are up for renegotiation over the next few years.
Glamour, the decades-old fashion and beauty magazine owned by Condé Nast, announced last week it was ending its regular print publication. It's the latest fashion rag to shutter or reduce its print edition, or consolidate its operations in the wake of a digital media transformation.
Why it matters: Fashion and beauty media has been hit particularly hard by the transition to digital, in part because newer bloggers and digital upstarts have been able to develop deeper relationships with consumers using direct-to-consumer products and influencers on social media that seem more authentic.
Fox Nation, an on-demand, subscription-based service ($5.99/month) that will include a weekly video from conservative social media stars Diamond & Silk, is set to launch on Tuesday morning.
Why it matters: Fox News is joining a very competitive field in the conservative news-streaming space. But the reality is that this is an experiment for the Murdochs, who have successfully launched streaming services elsewhere around the globe.
Ahead of this week's G20 summit in Argentina, it's clear from an interview President Trump gave The Wall Street Journal — and from Axios' own reporting — that his faith in tariffs is as strong as ever. Trump believes to his core that tariffs work, both to create negotiating leverage and as instruments to improve the U.S. economy, though it's hard to locate many economists who agree with Trump on the latter point.
The bottom line: A former top trade official on Capitol Hill said after reading the interview: "My main takeaway is that maybe Wall Street needs to stop being so optimistic that Trump is going to negotiate away this China thing in the relatively near future. We are in for a long haul."
