Executive Summary: Last weekend’s attack on Iran by the US and Israel has unleashed a vengeance that’s disrupting global energy commerce. Iran has bombed nearby countries’ oil and gas production facilities and threatened to burn ships in the Strait of

Executive Summary: FOMC officials agree: AI proliferation is a seismic macroeconomic force that will impact GDP growth, inflation, and the labor market. But they’re divided on the precise impacts and timing. Today, Melissa reads between the lines of Fed officials’

Executive Summary: China is on the losing end of President Trump’s foreign policy moves in Venezuela, Iran, and Greenland—all strategically important to China’s economy. How President Xi responds over the next few weeks will be critical to his legacy. William

Executive Summary: Saturday’s military attack on Iran by the US and Israel that killed Iran’s leader and 40 top officials is likely to push oil prices higher this week. However, in our short-war scenario, oil prices should fall in the

Executive Summary: Projections of a collapse in consumer spending as Americans lose jobs to AI en masse spooked the stock market recently—but perhaps unnecessarily. Jackie explains why that catastrophic scenario may be unlikely. … Also: A look at how various

Executive Summary: The Reserve Bank of Australia has been raising interest rates, with more hikes likely to come, to battle the highest rate of inflation among developed countries. William looks at the source of the problem and its global ramifications.

Executive Summary: The US economy has performed remarkably well this decade to date despite multiple unusual challenges that would have felled a less resilient economy. Widespread recession expectations failed to pan out repeatedly. The pattern continues, with today’s recession alarmists

Executive Summary: Asian economies that would have been hard-pressed to thrive under President Trump’s tariffs can celebrate the Supreme Court’s ruling that they’re unconstitutional. While that’s a net positive for these and other affected nations, William explains, tariff-related uncertainties remain.

Executive Summary: They may be magnificent, but they’re not invincible. The Mag-7 has been beaten down into correction territory, but the group still wields outsized influence over stock-market performance by virtue of its still huge market-cap share. Jackie examines the

Executive Summary: The AI innovations emerging from China are hot on the heels of Western rivals. William discusses Alibaba’s new AI model with agentic capabilities, its implications for the software industry, and China’s political paradox: President Xi wants to

Executive Summary: European leaders’ annual meeting in Belgium yielded a plan to increase Europe’s global competitiveness: One Market, One Europe. William discusses the pressures that have steeled leaders’ determination to unite the member countries into a single market, the three

Executive Summary: From AI-phoria to AI-phobia: Jackie reports on the recent shift in investors’ attitudes toward artificial intelligence. Its vast disruptive potential is akin to the Internet’s, dislodging some companies from their market positions and catapulting others into new spaces.

Executive Summary: With a huge snap election victory behind her, Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi effectively has a political mandate to run with her fiscal stimulus plans, plans that the Bond Vigilantes won’t condone. William discusses the high-stakes gambit being

Executive Summary: It’s a start, maybe: China’s President Xi Jinping finally has a plan to stabilize the property crisis that has hobbled the nation’s economy since 2020. But it’s limited in scope, William reports; more aggressive reforms are in order.

Executive Summary: Annual real GDP growth averaged 3.6% during the second half of the 1900s versus just 2.1% since 2000. Dr Ed projects a return to 3.6% or higher over the remainder of the “Roaring 2020s” and into the “Roaring

Executive Summary: The dark side of artificial intelligence was on full display in the stock market this week as various disconcerting news items stoked investor anxieties about semiconductor stocks and as fears triggered by a new AI-enabled tool to automate

Executive Summary: The US and India have cut a trade deal that looks like a win-win for both sides and a win as well for the global economy. William shares the details and potential derailers. While caveats abound, the deal

Executive Summary: With global trade alliances shifting as a result of Trump’s tariffs and impulsivity, more and more nations are rekindling ties with China. The geopolitical angle, says William, may be not “Sell America” but “Pivot to China.” China offers

Executive Summary: Today, Dr Ed examines the world according to Kevin Warsh, President Trump’s pick for the next Fed chair. Warsh believes that the US is undergoing a productivity-led growth boom, as our Roaring 2020s thesis maintains, which should be

Executive Summary: Small- and mid-capitalization stocks have been outperforming large caps since mid-November, and how! The S&P SmallCap 600 and MidCap 400 indexes are up in the double digits since then, dwarfing the S&P 500’s 4.6% rise. Does the rally

Executive Summary: The benefits of a strong economy aren’t always felt by the majority of the people. Today, Melissa discusses why many American families can’t make ends meet despite the US economy’s rapid growth and explains how the affordability crisis

Executive Summary: Ostensibly, Japan’s government bond market appears bound for a collapse. Debt is an astonishingly high percentage of GDP, which is flat-lining, and the new Prime Minister wants to implement unfunded tax cuts. But the Bond Vigilantes might not

Executive Summary: A curiosity of the current US economy is its remarkable strength despite an affordability crisis. Average real consumption per household and real hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers are at record highs, but plenty of people fall

Executive Summary: Today, Jackie examines why investors have hopped onto transportation stocks this year—sending them racing to record highs after four years of idling—as well as how Trump administration policies affect automakers. After the elimination of tax credits for EV

Executive Summary: The Bank of Japan is in a no-win situation as Friday’s monetary decision looms, damned if it raises rates and damned if it doesn’t. William explains the high stakes—political, economic, and bond market related—of its coming decision. …

Executive Summary: The EU finally inked a long-sought trade deal with a bloc of South American countries the very day that Trump slapped additional tariffs on EU countries opposing the US’s purchase of Greenland. William explains why the South American

Executive Summary: The defensive S&P 500 Consumer Staples sector has outperformed the broader market so far in this young year, and Jackie finds several reasons it has returned to investor favor. … Also, the S&P 500 Diversified Banks sector appears

Executive Summary: The FOMC’s annual rotation of voting members will be anything but a routine shuffling of seats this year, Melissa writes. Political pressure from the Oval Office to lower interest rates and the likelihood of a compliant new Fed

Executive Summary: Japan’s new prime minister is on the hook to pull the economy out of its stagflationary slump. That will be tough, William writes, especially now that China has slapped Japan with punishing trade and tourism bans. Whether Trump

Executive Summary: Last year was a picture-perfect rendering of our Roaring 2020s scenario in action. Economic growth soared on the shoulders of a productivity boom. Dr Ed expects more of the same through the decade’s end and possibly beyond. That