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
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 […]
Market mayhem bolsters appeal of liquidity products
Money market funds sometimes get a bad rap – they can be viewed as boring. Across the whole investment universe, investors have a vast array of choices: any number of asset classes that seek to balance risk with reward and offer the potential for higher returns. All money markets aim to do is provide a […]
The contours of a new trade landscape
Near-term equity and currency moves represent a short-term shock to the markets as the investment community digests the tariff news and reassesses relative economic growth, earnings estimates, and access to markets. While the tariff overhang has not disappeared, we are now much closer to the beginning of the end. Total market uncertainty has now been […]
