Week of May 21, 2021 Weekly Recap & The Week Ahead
“There are three ingredients for success—aggressiveness, timing and skill—and if you have enough aggressiveness at the right time, you don’t need that much skill.”
― Howard Marks
1. WarnerMedia’s Combination with Discovery Is the Latest Salvo in the Streaming Wars — WarnerMedia’s combination with Discovery creates the second-largest U.S. media company behind Walt Disney. Viacom and Comcast, the parent of NBCUniversal, will find themselves on the smaller end after the deal closes in terms of streaming scale, competing against their rivals’ bigger subscriber bases with their Paramount+ and Peacock offerings.
2. New York Drops Masks and Capacity Limits, a Potential Boon to Tourism — New York officially drops mask mandates for the vaccinated and capacity limits for everything from restaurants to museums and theaters on Wednesday, a potential boon to New York City’s economy as workers return to Midtown offices and tourists repopulate Times Square. More than 42% of all New Yorkers have been fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, and 12- to 15-year-olds became eligible for the Pfizer shots last week. Nearly 53% of the state’s adults are fully vaccinated. Tourists can get vaccinated in the city.
3. Fed Officials Discussed Tapering Bond Buying in the Latest Fed Minutes — The minutes related to the Federal Open Market Committee meeting at the end of April, before a weak report on the number of jobs added that month and before the April consumer-price index reported the fastest yearly increase since 2008. In the minutes, Fed officials noted elevated risk appetite in capital markets. “Should investor risk appetite fall, an associated drop in asset prices coupled with high business and financial leverage could have adverse implications for the real economy,” the minutes said. Supply chain bottlenecks and input shortages may not be resolved quickly, the minutes said, and could put upward pressure on prices.
4. Treasury Calls for Crypto Transfers Over $10,000 to Be Reported to IRS — The U.S. Treasury said the Biden administration’s proposal to strengthen tax compliance includes a requirement for transfers of at least $10,000 of cryptocurrency to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Cash transactions in excess of $10,000 are already subject to IRS reporting requirements.
The IRS in 2020 added a line about cryptocurrency on the Form 1040, the individual tax return, in an effort to gain more visibility into virtual currency transactions.
The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:
