Executive Summary: The escalation of war in the Middle East has caused oil prices to spike and thrown prior oil price forecasts out the window. Jackie takes a look at the dynamics affecting oil pricing in light of the recent

Executive Summary: Much ink has been spilled on the Magnificent-7 stocks’ outsized influence over the S&P 500’s performance given the group’s huge share of the index’s capitalization. Are other stock markets of the world similarly weighed down (or buoyed up)

Executive Summary: Fear of Trump’s tariff impacts has already sapped the life out of Japan’s consumer sector, raising the specter of stagflation and thwarting the Bank of Japan’s tightening plans. If BOJ Governor Ueda fails to navigate the economy away

Executive Summary: Now that China and the US are negotiating nicely, Jackie explores the pain their standoff caused businesses on both sides of the Pacific and the compromises recently struck. Were investors who bet the new deals struck would benefit

Executive Summary: With South Korea’s new president promising financial reforms that are bound to reward shareholders, the country’s stock market is sailing on a wave of optimism. The days of the long-standing “Korea discount” may be numbered, William reports. …

Executive Summary: As investors, central bankers, and economists the world over await the US monetary policy decision to emerge from next week’s FOMC meeting, William and Ed assess where Fed officials’ heads are at. Their recent speeches don’t suggest urgency

Executive Summary: Over the past three and a half years, the US economy has defied the recession expectations of many, remaining uncommonly resilient in the face of stress tests including Fed tightening, an oil price spike, and most recently Trump’s

Executive Summary: If only the US government had taken the threat of dependence on China’s rare earth minerals more seriously when it had the chance, China wouldn’t hold the trump card now. Jackie recaps the recommendations of a congressional study

Executive Summary: Trump’s Tariff Turmoil has undermined the US’s credit worthiness and unsteadied the dollar. For countries harboring currency-dominance aspirations, that’s been a blessing in disguise. Today, William explains why China’s aspirations for the yuan won’t bear fruit anytime soon.

Executive Summary: How damaging to the US economy are Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff proclamations? The stock market is barely reacting to them anymore, but consumers remain worried about the inflation implications of tariffs, according to “soft” survey data. Even so,

Executive Summary: Defense stocks are bifurcating: The underperforming have-nots are the big DOD contractors, with meager share price gains so far this year, if any. The outperforming haves are innovative defense tech companies redefining not only how war is waged

Executive Summary: The Trump administration’s protectionist policies have undermined the US dollar’s strength, but do they put its global supremacy at risk? No, there is no realistic contender among global currencies. Today, Melissa debunks the notion that the euro has

Executive Summary: After last week’s portentous Japanese government bond auction, in which demand was so weak as to be off the charts, William explains what went wrong and why. Contributing factors included the BOJ’s halted tightening owing to “tariff haze,”

Executive Summary: Tech companies are already putting AI to work to ramp up their efficiency and productivity and to pare down their workforces. Non-tech companies are sure to follow. Jackie takes a look at where this evolution stands today and

Executive Summary: The headlines were wrong: Global investors in US Treasury bonds didn’t beat a hasty retreat when Moody’s downgraded the US’s debt rating. A “Liz Truss Moment” it wasn’t. Asian investors and policymakers already knew what Moody’s had to

Executive Summary: Intractable demographic problems are straining China’s economic system and thwarting policymakers’ attempts to battle deflation. Rapidly declining birthrates are providing fewer new consumers, and elderly Chinese are savers, not spenders. Amid these pressures, falling prices “take on a

Executive Summary: Two scenarios to put on your radar: Bond prices might melt down if the Bond Vigilantes are roused by the downgrading of the US’s sovereign debt rating and/or the prospect that Trump’s tax-cut bill worsens the federal budget

Executive Summary: President Trump’s policies are regrading industry playing fields across economic sectors. Jackie discusses some of the ramifications for the companies hurt and helped. … If Trump 2.0’s attempts to dismantle Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act succeed, they would pose

Executive Summary: Today, we look at how Trump 2.0’s trade negotiations are impacting Asian nations’ economic policy decisions. From his seat in Japan, William describes the collective sigh of relief when President Trump slashed tariffs on China Monday and what

Executive Summary: China’s insidious deflation pressures are now evident in its producer and consumer price data. Government measures to stimulate the economy haven’t addressed the cause of the deflation problem—that the Chinese spend too little and save too much in

Executive Summary:  Even though Q1 earnings were fabulous, most economists, industry analysts, and corporate managements have low hopes that Trump’s Tariff Turmoil won’t dunk the US economy into a recession this year. Not us: We’re counting on the economy’s resilience.

Executive Summary: Oil prices have sputtered amid fears of weak global oil demand in a trade-warring world. Today, Jackie reviews news that bears upon the supply/demand balance underpinning oil pricing. The decision by OPEC+ to no longer underproduce should

Executive Summary: The Eurozone is improving economically as the US remains cloaked in uncertainty, its exceptionality being questioned by some. Melissa explores the countervailing forces affecting the Europe’s economic growth prospects and suggests that its equity markets might offer

Executive Summary: The reordering of global trade patterns stemming from Trump’s Tariff Turmoil is having distinct ramifications for market players and policymakers the world over, as William explains today. Inexpensive Chinese imports flooding into Europe’s auto markets are confounding

Executive Summary: We believe in the resilience of the US economy. Recent years’ monetary tightening didn’t bring on a recession; this year’s tariff turmoil isn’t likely to either. We’re lowering the odds we see of a recession back to

Executive Summary: Trump’s Tariff Turmoil has resulted in tectonic upheavals of the operating environments companies navigate in myriad industries, and few chief executives know what the future will bring or how to plan for it. Today, Jackie reports on

Executive Summary: Investors can dismiss worries that the US dollar’s weakness presages an emerging-market-style crisis. That’s impossible for the US. Foreign investors need dollars to invest in US assets, which retain their clear advantage in attracting investment capital. We

Executive Summary: In setting cartoonishly large tariffs on China, Trump assumes the US has the upper hand. But does China really need America as much as Trump thinks? President Xi hasn’t come crawling to Trump, pleading for softer terms; he’s

Executive Summary: A dovish faction has been forming within the Federal Reserve Board, dissenting from Chief Powell’s hawkish party line. Rather than wait and see whether tariffs deliver greater blows to the economic or the inflation outlook before changing

Executive Summary: The US oil and gas industry isn’t in the direct line of Trump’s tariff fire, but it’s affected nonetheless, Jackie explains. Slower global economic growth in a trade-constricted world will dampen energy demand; that prospect is hurting oil