Videos

Louis recently spent time meeting companies and investors in China and found that animal spirits have indeed taken a big knock as a result of government policies. In this video interview, he discusses what this mood shift means for asset markets and offers a view on how investors should play a more circumspect China.

For China bulls, April really was the cruelest month, with economic indicators undershooting expectations almost across the board. In response, market sentiment has swung from the excessive bullishness that prevailed at the end of 2022 to what looks now like an excess of bearishness.

There are tentative signs that the US housing downturn is flattening out, however, Will is not convinced that an upswing now beckons. He worries that US housing remains unaffordable by historical standards and the new home market is moderately oversupplied. As a member of the US recession camp, he worries that a looming deterioration in the labor market will reinforce these negative drivers.

Over the last decade, the eurozone banking system relied on emergency lending facilities that made liquidity freely available and predictably priced. Today, the ECB is both winding down its quantitative easing and allowing liquidity operations to expire. That will force European banks to rely on each other for interbank lending. In this video, Nick explores what that means for banks and investors alike.

The reduction in a key measure of interbank liquidity in Hong Kong and a weakening of the Hong Kong dollar has led some investors to conclude that trouble looms for the Asian financial center. In this video interview, Vincent explains why the real victim of “normalization” in the Hong Kong dollar market may not be the currency peg but the local property market.

Worsening US-China relations presents both a threat and an opportunity to other Asian economies. Many non-China producers will lose out if the re-onshoring trend gathers pace. On the other hand, Western producers’ move to seek new supplier networks represents a major opportunity.

The Opec+ petroleum exporters’ cartel is cutting back its crude production and China's reopening evokes memories of how previous Chinese rebound drove oil demand. But is that the case today? Tom weighs the conflicting forces driving oil demand and supply, and assesses the outlook for prices over the remainder of 2023.

Emmanuel Macron’s domestic reform agenda looks to have met its Waterloo over massive popular opposition to pension reform. In this video interview, Cedric takes stock of Macron’s presidency and explains what it means for France’s economic prospects in the next four years.

In last week’s video interview, Louis Gave argued that the problem affecting banks was concentrated in the US and did not really deserve the moniker “crisis”. Tan Kai Xian agrees that banking problems are mostly focused in the US, but he worries that this will prove to be a rolling crisis whose effects worsen as it develops.

Three weeks into the “banking crisis”, Louis takes stock of the reaction from asset markets and considers how investors should be positioning themselves.

Tom Holland warned that a further fall in the supply of Russian piped natural gas could lead to energy rationing for European industry. Vincent Tsui and Udith Sikand surveyed the emerging market landscape to determine the winners and losers from higher energy prices, a stronger US dollar and tighter policy from the US Federal Reserve. Tom Miller reviewed Russia-China relations.

As European economies emerge from the pandemic, policymakers have signaled a sooner-than-expected normalization of monetary policy, which has spooked investors. In this webinar, our team evaluated if the ECB is serious about raising interest rates later this year and whether this looks like a 2011-style policy mistake in the making.

The US economy is enduring growth pains from supply chain disruption and a tight labor market that are feeding into higher inflation, and therefore a more hawkish central bank. Yet with both households and companies in generally good financial shape, these problems can be weathered, and US growth should remain above its structural rate for a while yet. Our US analysts outlined their relatively upbeat view in this webinar and explained what it means for asset markets.

Energy prices are likely to have a big impact on macroeconomics and market performance in the coming year. Our research team has assessed the effect of three different pricing scenarios on the US, Europe and emerging economies. In this webinar, they presented their findings.

China enters 2022 having made a very apparent shift in policy toward supporting economic stability, but it still has very obvious growth problems. The construction downturn is deepening, Covid restrictions are spreading and reliable growth engines could be fading. Is the government’s measured and moderate strategy up to the task?

Louis is convinced that the trend of higher energy prices, steeper yield curves and value stock outperformance is here to stay—at least until some major event comes along to change the story. Anatole, by contrast, continues to think that the inflation surge is about to be revealed as a scare and reckons that strong earnings growth will soon be driving a resurgence in growth stocks.

In the US and Europe, the new year has begun with a huge wave of workplace absenteeism due to surging omicron Covid cases. In China, policymakers are adopting a whack-a-mole approach to multiple Covid outbreaks, while other emerging economies are curtailing market opening measures. Our team outline their base case views for growth, inflation and markets in 2022.

Our senior team consider the big strategy questions that should be vexing investors in 2022. This includes an assessment of potential positive surprises that could present opportunities for investors who are positioned ahead of time. Our team also consider prospects for the undersupplied and underinvested global energy market.

In our recent live-streamed seminar in Beijing, Anatole presented his case for why markets are right not to panic about high headline inflation numbers. Louis cast doubt on claims that this current bout of inflation is transitory. Arthur and members of the Dragonomics team presented on China's economy, policy goals and asset markets.

As winter sets in, Europe seems beset with uncertainties: around Covid, energy prices and inflation. Anatole Kaletsky, Cedric Gemehl and Nick Andrews weigh these and other forces that will be at work in 2022 to assess the outlook for Europe’s economy and markets in the new year.