Markets Overview
- ASX SPI 200 futures down 0.1% to 7,143.00
- Dow Average little changed at 33,946.71
- Aussie down 0.6% to 0.6756 per US$
- U.S. 10-year yield rose 7.4bps to 3.7927%
- Australia 3-year bond yield rose 2.9 bps to 3.97%
- Australia 10-year bond yield fell 0.5 bps to 3.98%
- Gold spot down 1.0% to $1,913.72
- Brent futures down 3.9% to $74.15/bbl
Economic Events
- 09:00: (AU) June Judo Bank Australia PMI Compos, prior 51.6
- 09:00: (AU) June Judo Bank Australia PMI Mfg, prior 48.4
- 09:00: (AU) June Judo Bank Australia PMI Servic, prior 52.1
Bond yields climbed after major central banks warned about the potential for more interest-rate hikes, with officials signaling they’re nowhere near ready to declare victory over inflation.
Treasury two-year yields hit the highest since March as Jerome Powell said the US may need one or two more rate increases in 2023 while the Bank of England cautioned it may have to hike again after delivering a half-point boost. A key section of the German yield curve inverted the most since 1992 on economic concern. Norway’s krone led gains among developed currencies as the nation’s officials pledged more aggressive tightening.
Equities struggled for direction throughout most of the session, with the S&P 500 closing with a mild gain after a three-day slide. A renewed rally in megacaps like Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. fueled the rebound, with the Nasdaq 100 up more than 1%. As stocks gained traction, Wall Street’s favorite volatility gauge, the VIX, slumped below 13 to the lowest level since January 2020.
Other News
New Yorkers are used to finding quirky situations when apartment hunting, but a ban on cooking meat and fish in the building might be a new one.
The real estate listing that appeared briefly in Brooklyn last week sounded beguiling: two spacious, sun-drenched, full-floor apartments in a wide brick townhome in Fort Greene with spectacular outdoor spaces and period details.
The “wonderful vegan landlord,” the broker wrote, had only one house rule: “no meat/fish in the building.”
Even in a city where renters will pay mansionesque prices to live in an apartment with a bathtub in the kitchen or a studio so narrow you can touch both walls at once, the meatless walkup is unusual.
But at a by-appointment-only open house on Sunday, the steady stream of prospective tenants — only some of whom said they were vegetarians — indicated that the rule was not an automatic deal breaker. (Nor, apparently, was the price: The apartments, both one-bedrooms, are renting for $4,500 and $5,750.)
Actually, the broker, Andrea Kelly, explained to one prospect, meat eaters were not banned; cooking meat and fish was. “It’s not vegetarian-only, but the owner lives in the building and doesn’t want the smell of cooking meat drifting upstairs,” she said.
So, sushi, steak tartare and takeout: yes. Roasting a chicken: absolutely not.
The owner, Michal Arieh Lerer, refused to speak to a reporter, and Ms. Kelly and her employers at Douglas Elliman declined to comment. But Ms. Lerer’s ex-husband, who co-owns the building and is also vegan, said that they both had refused to rent to carnivores who cook since buying the house in 2007.
“It’s not about discrimination,” said the ex-husband, Motti Lerer. “You have to fit into the building.”
All of which raises the question: Is this legal?
It seems to be. The city’s Human Rights Law lists 14 characteristics that landlords are not allowed to consider in deciding whether to rent an apartment to someone, including age, race, family status, job, source of income and sexual orientation. Fondness for hamburgers is not one of them.
It is this “allowed unless specifically forbidden” construction of anti-discrimination law that makes it perfectly legal for landlords to refuse to rent to smokers — they are not a protected class either.
Lucas A. Ferrara, an adjunct professor at New York Law School and co-author of the multivolume book “Landlord and Tenant Practice in New York,” said a potential tenant might be able to fight the meat ban if, for example, they showed they had a medical condition that required some sort of “reasonable accommodation” on the landlord’s part.
“Absent an exception of that type,” Mr. Ferrara wrote, “the restriction would otherwise be permissible.”
The listing that mentioned the rule, on nextdoor.com, was taken down on Friday, the day after it was posted, but Douglas Elliman still lists theapartments on its own site, though without mention of the meat policy. The listings do note, “Cats welcome on a case-by-case basis (only one, please).”
(New York Times)
