How should credit investors navigate such an uncertain backdrop?
Fast reading Uncertainty stemming from the Republican administration’s economic policy has undermined confidence in capital markets. Credit ratings agency Moody’s has downgraded US sovereign debt to Aa1 from Aaa. Notwithstanding a reset on tariffs with China, many market drivers – for lenders, borrowers and investors – are in a holding pattern until an element of […]
What word best encapsulates the current economic environment?
Video transcript The word that best describes economic conditions right now has to be ‘uncertainty’. We hear it frequently on earnings calls from investors and across the capital markets, from all participants. By way of evidence, we searched the word uncertainty in the Fed’s ‘Beige Book’. The ‘Beige Book’ is a summary of economic conditions […]
Oil prices stop making sense
For the past few years, the expanded group of oil producers known as OPEC+ have tried collectively to stabilise crude prices by lowering production in order to dampen price volatility to the downside. But because several members of the wider cartel have different and conflicting fiscal and external financing priorities, efforts to limit output have not […]
Can Argentina reboot its crisis-ridden economy?
EMD report Q2 2025
MDT Advisers: Can machine learning deliver a diversified alpha stream?
In a recent webinar with IPE, Scott Conlon, Investment Director and Quantitative Strategist of MDT Advisers, shared his valuable insights on how sophisticated predictive modelling can be used to identify a diversified range of alpha sources, and equip our portfolios with the potential to add value regardless of the environment. He also examined the case […]
Sticks and stones
It was only a matter of when, not if, the White House would harass the Federal Reserve again. Chair Jerome Powell got a short respite as President Donald Trump reiterated he doesn’t intend to fire him, despite constantly demanding lower interest rates. After the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced yesterday it had held rates […]
Bonds do their job during the first 100 days of uncertainty
The month of April demonstrated the complexity of capital market relationships. After a solid first quarter, where US Treasuries offered some positive returns to counter struggling stocks, the volatility shock created by the 2 April ‘Liberation Day’ announcement and President Donald Trump’s later attack on Federal Reserve (Fed) chair Jerome Powell temporarily took things in another direction. […]
Investing in a post ‘Liberation Day’ era
Video transcript It’s been almost a month now since Liberation Day, and it’s time to try to think about what this all means. My suggestion is ignore the short term and the volatility that goes with it. It’s hard to predict. Ignore the politics because people have different views. Let’s concentrate on what we know. […]
The greenback is singing the blues
The hurly-burly in Washington has the potential to reshape the global political and economic landscape, but will it knock the US dollar from its preeminent perch? Some are viewing the plunge of the dollar index since President Donald Trump’s announcement of tariffs as a sign it will. The argument itself conflates two concepts. One is that the […]
The curious case of rising US Treasury yields
US Treasury yields increased sharply after falling leading up to and immediately after the 2 April tariffs announcement. The tariff reprieve on 9 April initially quelled the surge, but rates remain elevated. The surprise is that typically when global risks increase, the flight to quality trade ensues – US Treasury yields go down, prices go […]
