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Quarterly Strategy Review: 3Q26

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Quarterly Strategy Review: 3Q26

Louis-Vincent Gave
5 Oct 2026
After the third quarter saw a brutal sell-off in major government bond markets, with yields breaking out to a generational high, Louis takes stock. In this Quarterly Strategy Review, he examines the forces driving the sell-off and asks the key questions facing investors everywhere.
What If US Treasuries Rebound?

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What If US Treasuries Rebound?

Louis-Vincent Gave
5 Oct 2026
With equities posting a decent quarter, and bonds being taken to the woodshed, one might have imagined some kind of quarter-end rebalancing by large pension funds, insurance companies, or even RIAs selling equities to buy bonds. This did not happen. Now, the bearish case for US treasuries is obvious enough, but when markets become oversold, counter-trend rallies frequently occur. With that in mind, it probably makes sense to ponder which asset classes might rally the most should yields roll over.

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An Unbalanced Earnings Cycle

Thomas Gatley
5 Oct 2026
2026 has seen one of the most idiosyncratic profit cycles in recent Chinese history, with earnings soaring but output volume actually falling for many sectors. Thomas argues that headline corporate profits have been fueled by the combination of a historically massive global electronics boom and windfall earnings from high oil prices caused by the Iran conflict. But for domestically focused firms, things look less rosy—and beneath the surface, financial stress remains high.

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Geoeconomic Monitor: Europe Fights China Shock

Cedric Gemehl, Tom Miller
2 Oct 2026
Nearly nine years after Donald Trump launched America’s trade war with China, Europe is close to following suit. Beijing does not believe Brussels has the spine to fight, but it is probably mistaken. The risk, says Cedric Gemehl, is that Beijing punches back harder. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is making progress on loosening China’s grip on critical minerals in its military supply chains, argues Tom Miller.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Subsidizing Mortgages
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Wei He, Dragonomics Team
Infrastructure Is Becoming Ineffective
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Wei He
Industrial Policy Delivers A Fiscal Payoff
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Tilly Zhang
The Export Wave Is Cresting
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Andrew Batson
A Reluctant Rise In EV Prices
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Ernan Cui

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How Asia’s Surpluses Are Evolving
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Udith Sikand
Video: The ECB Succession Drama
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Cedric Gemehl
How Wide Can French Spreads Get?
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Cedric Gemehl
Burnham Starts Transforming Britain
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Anatole Kaletsky
US Strategy: After The Inflationary Boom
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Will Denyer, Tan Kai Xian

Gavekal Technologies

Great Tech In Search Of Profits
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AJ Cortese, Laila Khawaja
GavekalTech On The Ground: 2026 China Tech Trip Takeaways
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Laila Khawaja
Chinese EV Makers’ European Offensive
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AJ Cortese
Webinar: The State Of China Tech
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Arthur Kroeber, Laila Khawaja, AJ Cortese
China’s Anti-Dumping Calculus
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Laila Khawaja

Gavekal-IS

Amathia
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Didier Darcet
When Asia Revalues…
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Didier Darcet
Where Does The Money Go?
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Didier Darcet
The Macroeconomics Of AI In Practice
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Didier Darcet
The Macroeconomics Of AI: Part II
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Didier Darcet

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Desperately Seeking An Anchor

Charles Gave, Louis-Vincent Gave
14 Sep 2026
Charles and Louis argue that a new monetary anchor is emerging in Asia, centered on the renminbi, just as Western currencies and bond markets are becoming less reliable stores of value. With most of the world’s excess savings generated in Asia, more capital will stay in the region rather than flow into Western assets, eroding structural support for the US dollar, euro and Western bond markets.

Checking The Boxes

Our short take on the latest news

Fact
Surprise
Takeaway

US nonfarm payrolls rose 29k in Sep, versus 133k in Aug

Rise smaller than 90k expected; unemployment rate rose to 4.2% in Sep, from 4.1% in Aug

Softening jobs market will make Fed cautious about further rate hikes

US factory orders rose 0.1% MoM in Aug, versus 0.8% in Jul

Weaker than expected 0.2%

Volatile series; underlying trend shows AI-led capex boom is still strong

Eurozone HICP rose 3.8% YoY in Sep, versus 3.2% in Aug

Inflation above expected 3.7%; core HICP rose 2.5% YoY in Sep, versus 2.4% in Aug

ECB to proceed with cautious rate hikes amid rising price pressures and stronger activity

Brazilian industrial production fell -0.6% MoM in Aug, versus 0.1% in Jul

Weaker than expected 0.1%; YoY, production fell -1.2% in Aug, versus -0.5% in Jul

Broad-based decline shows elevated interest rates are squeezing industrial output

Test Your Knowledge
For the first time, a Chinese rocket will carry the citizen of a foreign country into space. Which country?
  1. North Korea
  2. Kazakhstan
  3. Pakistan
  4. Iran
Post Your Answer

Chart of the Week

Week 40, 2026
After years of fierce competition, the price war between Chinese electric vehicle makers seems finally to be ending, as prices increased from 2025 to 2026. This aligns with the aims of the government’s anti-involution campaign, but the main reason for the change is rising costs, which have continued to push down auto makers' profit margins. The rise in prices will weigh on domestic EV sales, which have already declined this year.
Open Chart

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Essential Reading: A Book For Every Week Of The Year

Gavekal is often asked for a recommended reading list. So, here it is: a book a week that everyone interested in the world of macro investing—whether hoary veteran or eager apprentice—can benefit from reading.

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Webinar: The State Of China Tech

Arthur Kroeber, Laila Khawaja, AJ Cortese
25 Sep 2026
As presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping prepare for their summit meeting in Washington, China’s fast-growing technology capabilities are a major topic. The big questions at the moment are how close Chinese artificial-intelligence labs are to matching the US frontier models, and whether the two sides can start negotiating rules on AI safety. But behind those lie even bigger questions: What is the balance of technological power between the US and China? And how far can the world's two big tech powers go in pulling apart the thick webs of interdependence that tie them together?

The Iran War And Fallout

The Non-Threatening Energy Crisis
This weekend’s media made for sobering reading. Between bombs flying in the Middle East, more refineries blowing up in Russia and US senators calling for petroleum export bans, it felt like enough negative news flow to send hearts racing. But most major global equity markets remain close to all-time highs. Louis examines the possible reasons for this counterintuitive configuration.
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No Good Outcomes For Energy Inflation
It is Wednesday. Warring parties in the Middle East are again exchanging fire, and energy prices are spiking. For investors, it may be tempting to shrug off the latest flare-up, but disregarding the latest escalation in the Persian Gulf would be rash. Developments in the region will matter greatly for the trajectory of inflation over the coming months, and therefore for financial markets.
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The Record High Diesel Prices
Because of soaring crack spreads, diesel prices everywhere around the world are making new all-time highs, at least in nominal terms. In real terms, the diesel price is still lower than the 2022 spike that followed the start of the Ukraine war. But Louis points out that with a real term diesel price above US$5/gallon, few good things happen.
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The Limits Of Economic Fury
The US administration is now switching its focus to a campaign of “economic fury” in an effort to achieve its strategic aims against Iran. It is not obvious that this latest phase of the conflict is any more likely to result in a quick and easy US victory than the kinetic war. However, the economic implications of a prolonged stand-off may be less ominous than they at first appear.
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US economy & markets

Are US Long Bonds A Buy? (Part IV)
US bonds face an unappealing near-term backdrop of persistent inflation, Fed tightening and heavy public and private-sector issuance. Yet unlike in 2022, valuations now favor bonds over equities, while rising real yields are approaching levels that could start to constrain capital spending and growth. For Will, this argues against going overweight bonds, but makes a neutral position increasingly attractive as a hedge against a sudden change in the investment environment.
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Another Blow For Bonds?
The 10-year US treasury yield broke through the 5% level to hit 5.11%, its highest since the outbreak of the credit crunch in July 2007. With inflation pressure persistent and the Federal Reserve on a tightening track, yields could rise further in the near term. In addition, there are growing signs that the US labor market may be set to tighten, pushing both wage growth and inflation higher.
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Where The US Is (Still) Exceptional
Compared with European stocks, US stocks are no longer exceptional. Over the past four years, there has been no sustained trend in the relative performance of the two. That said, at the sector level, US consumer discretionary and staples stocks have continued to outperform their European counterparts.
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Dario Cannot Pace The AI Frontier, But Real Yields Might
The AI investment boom came under renewed threat Saturday when Anthropic’s chief executive argued that his company and others should “slow the pace” of model development to ensure safe deployment. At the same time, there is growing grassroots pressure to regulate the pace of data center deployment. Long-term bond yields have also climbed quickly. These are all potential threats to the AI capex boom. But how likely is each to seriously throttle investment?
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China chartbook

Gavekal Dragonomics

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Macro Update: Pushed And Pulled

Wei He, Dragonomics Team
3 Aug 2026
China’s economy is being pushed and pulled by two external shocks: the supply shock from the Iran war and the demand shock from the AI capex boom. Both are creating lots of volatility in trade flows, prices and profits, although the underlying trend of the domestic economy has not yet changed much. Neither are China’s policymakers showing much sign of significantly changing course. In our latest quarterly chartbook, Wei and the Dragonomics team diagnose the current situation and the policy outlook.

India chartbook

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India Corporate Update: Waiting For Capex

Rohan Daswani, Udith Sikand
28 Aug 2026
India remains one of the world’s strongest growth stories, supported by resilient domestic demand, improving corporate balance sheets and strong credit growth. Yet as the boost from public infrastructure investment fades, the big question is whether these strengths can finally translate into a sustained revival in private investment. Rohan and Udith assess the prospects for that transition and the implication for Indian equities, where performance is increasingly diverging across sectors.

Latest video

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Video: The ECB Succession Drama

Cedric Gemehl
1 Oct 2026
Rumors are swirling that European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde may step down early, following influential executive board member Isabel Schnabel in quitting the ECB before her term ends. In this video interview, Cedric Gemehl explores the reasons behind a potential early change of leadership at the ECB, explains why personalities matter, and examines the big decisions the incoming appointees will face.

Strategy Chartbook

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Quarterly Strategy Review: 3Q26

Louis-Vincent Gave
5 Oct 2026
After the third quarter saw a brutal sell-off in major government bond markets, with yields breaking out to a generational high, Louis takes stock. In this Quarterly Strategy Review, he examines the forces driving the sell-off and asks the key questions facing investors everywhere.

Emerging markets

EMs Are The New DMs
Emerging-market bonds have dramatically outperformed their developed-market peers since 2020, helped by greater policy credibility, deeper domestic financial markets and reduced reliance on foreign investors. With DM bond yields now hitting multi-year highs, policymakers may increasingly look to the EM playbook, including softer forms of financial repression, to stabilize their markets, says Udith. From the US to Japan, signs of this shift are already emerging, suggesting that EMs may have a thing or two to teach DMs.
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Video: Are EMs Back?
It’s been a good quarter for the broad emerging markets complex. The MSCI EM index has returned almost 7% in US dollar terms, while US equities are down by some -3.5%. So should investors jump on the EM train? Udith points out that there is a wide divergence in the performance of individual emerging markets, and the threat of tariffs hangs heavy over EM corporate earnings. Investors need to be selective.
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Video: Southeast Asia Under Trump 2.0
Global investors are rightly focused on the potential losers from the United States pursuing an aggressively protectionist trade policy agenda, but there may be winners as well. Tom went in search of such economies last week. Today he explains how such “swing states” are likely to perform in an intensified period of great power rivalry between the US and China.
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China Turbocharges EM Investment
As the rich world pulls up the protectionist drawbridge, investors risk missing a bigger story in emerging markets. Here, Chinese outbound investment is rebounding after the fallow Covid years, and is driving a new wave of industrialization that promises to lower the cost of the green-energy transition.
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Europe's economy

How Wide Can French Spreads Get?
Over the last three weeks of September, the sovereign yield spread between 10-year French OATs and 10-year German bunds widened 40bp, hitting 127bp on Wednesday. That is a gap last seen in June 2012, just weeks before Mario Draghi’s “whatever it takes” speech. Inevitably, therefore, France’s current bond market stresses have evoked memories of the euro crisis, and left investors wondering: just how wide could French spreads get this time around?
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Burnham Starts Transforming Britain
Burnham’s speech to the Labour Party conference announced a cutback in pension spending that was unthinkable under Starmer. More importantly, it showed an openness to possible U-turns in fiscal policy, EU relations and electoral reform. While the initial market reaction to Burnham’s speech was indifference or skepticism, there are three reasons why this really could be a turning point in Britain’s financial fortunes.
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The Nordic Model Under Deglobalization
The Nordic economies may look vulnerable to the same industrial pressures weighing on Germany, but much of their adjustment took place during the 2010s, when manufacturers shifted production abroad while retaining a specialized core at home. With domestic demand now recovering, August says the Nordics appear better placed than Germany to navigate a less global world and a potential new China shock
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More Merzschmerz
In German, the language with a word for everything, Merzschmerz describes the pain of struggling for 50 years to climb the political ladder, only to get to the top and find that no one wanted you as leader, they just couldn’t think of anyone else. Well, for Germany’s federal chancellor, Friedrich Merz, the hurt has not faded over time. Speculations about a Kanzlertausch—a change of chancellor—are swirling. Cedric reads the political tea leaves.
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Equities

Where The US Is (Still) Exceptional
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Profit Maxing And Social Anti-Fragility
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The (Better) Case For European Banks
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Should Equity Investors Be Reassured By Record Corporate Profits?
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Important Recent Developments
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A Buy Recommendation
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Fixed income

How Wide Can French Spreads Get?
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The Biggest Hot Potato In History
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Video: The Challenge For Fixed Income Investors
Are US Long Bonds A Buy? (Part III)
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Video: The Bond Market’s Big Question
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Video: Breakdown Or Buying Opportunity For US Bonds?
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From the archives: oldies but goodies

Deficit Deniers Of The World Unite
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Deficit Deniers Of The World Unite

Anatole Kaletsky
In our politically correct age the pressure to bow down before certain popularly accepted and apparently proven “truths” can be overwhelming. In the aftermath of the US elections, two such nostrums are unnecessarily vexing investors—the urgency of deficit reduction and fear of higher taxes. I believe that both of these obsessions will soon be forgotten.
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Are We Entering into Revolutionary Times?
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Are We Entering into Revolutionary Times?

Louis-Vincent Gave
The role of a society’s elite is to rise to the challenges of the times, and find solutions fitting to those times, even if this involves a radical break with the past. But the modus operandi for most leaders is to try and maintain the status quo. But if the problems are large enough, this does not work, and the same challenges reappear until either a solution is found, the elite is replaced by a new elite, or the country, system or civilization disappears.
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The High Cost Of Free Money
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The High Cost Of Free Money

Charles Gave
Perhaps the most famous economic law is the one that there is no such thing as a free lunch. By keeping US short rates at abnormally low levels beyond the financial crisis and as growth bounces back beyond the dreams of the wildest optimists, the Fed increasingly seems to be trying to ‘feed the US economy for nothing’. This is worrying, for extended periods of cheap money typically come back with a hefty price tag.
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