We have had kind of a rough week on Wall Street — a selloff in the equity markets, and the bond market looking to have its worst week in two months.
“Bond yields are going back up to vaguely normal levels, stock prices are not going up anymore because people are worried that companies aren’t going to be able to make more money,” said Felix Salmon of Reuters. “So yeah, it’s a bit uncomfortable if you’re one of those people who care about what the markets do from day to day — which those of us who are smart never care about, right?”
“The market and the overall economy have been two really divergent stories for the past several months, and this week they kind of converged a little bit,” added Fortune magazine’s Leigh Gallagher. “There’s been a tremendous amount of unease about the economy, whereas the stock market has just been shooting to the stars. And so this was sort of a reality check a little bit. And we saw some not-so-great earnings results from two big bellwethers: Walmart and Cisco. Walmart being a bellwether for the consumer and Cisco being a bellwether for tech and business spendings. So that’s sort of scary-making.”
Listen to the full audio for more on what’s going on in Europe, and what happened in the London Whale case. And then check out what Leigh and Felix offered for their weekend #longreads picks:
Felix suggested:
- How Silicon Valley does international charity.
- Does the FBI now work for Goldman Sachs?
Leigh chose:
- Fortune’s profile of Carlos Brito, king of beers.
- Matt Taibbi on the college loan crisis.
- Marissa Mayer in Vogue.
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