Financial startup SoFi isn't just about lending you money to refinance your student loans. It wants to invest your money too — and to that end it unveiled this week a “gig economy”-themed exchange-traded fund, trading under the ticker symbol GIGE.
By the numbers: The actively managed fund comes with an expense ratio of 0.59%, unlike SoFi’s first two ETFs, which have a zero expense ratio.
There are now more than 6 PR professionals for every journalist in the U.S., as Bloomberg notes.
Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Note: Salaries in April 2019 dollars. Data shows “public relations specialists” vs. “reporters and correspondents” as defined by BLS; Starting in 2003, BLS excludes “news analysts” from the “reporters and correspondents” category; Starting In 1998, BLS excludes “publicity writers” from the “public relations specialists” category; Chart: Lazaro Gamio/Axios
Why it matters: PR jobs have doubled in the past two decades, even as newsrooms shrink, deal with buyouts and sometimes disappear altogether.
The first rule of trade negotiations is that they take place in private. The minute either side starts setting out goals and demands in public, positions become hardened and compromise becomes an embarrassing climbdown.
Why it matters: With the imposition of massive new tariffs this week, accompanied by explicit threats, Trump has taken Sino-American trade negotiations outdoors, into a public arena where they have much less chance of success. Even before announcing retaliatory countermeasures, China has similarly gone public with its own red lines. Resolving this dispute is not yet impossible, but it has become exponentially harder. Among the dangers:
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow admitted to Fox News' Chris Wallace on Sunday that the Chinese do not directly pay tariffs on goods coming into the U.S., but argued that China will suffer GDP losses as a result of a diminishing export markets.
The New York Times recently interviewed farmers and agricultural leaders in Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska and North Dakota to gauge their responses to another round of U.S.-China trade negotiations ending without a deal. China has been a longtime buyer of Midwestern crops.
What they're saying: Some farmers remain hopeful that a deal can be reached, but most have had to cut costs to cope — like going without health insurance, delaying equipment purchases and crop sales, and scaling down livestock operations.
With a pair of improbable billion-dollar acquisitions, huge conglomerates have snapped up both of the cheap shaving startups that shook up the men's grooming business.
The big picture: The deals — for Dollar Shave Club, Harry’s and yet a third startup called Bevel — reflect a trend in which new companies pop up and upend large industries, but don’t last long.
