Videos

India posted a blazing 20% year-on-year growth figure in the calendar year’s second quarter. The country seems to have ducked a third Covid wave and equity investors remain ebullient. In this video interview, Udith explores a number of gathering problems for the Indian economy but concedes that the good times could easily keep on rolling.

Hong Kong is sticking to its zero-Covid policies, complete with a travel ban on outsiders and Draconian quarantine rules for returning residents, even as Singapore tentatively reopens to international arrivals. In this video interview, Vincent explains what is driving Hong Kong’s uncompromising stance on Covid. He assesses whether it will damage the city’s standing as a regional financial center, and whether doubts over the status of China Evergrande’s offshore bonds will undermine the credibility of Hong Kong’s markets.

After the resignation of two regional Federal Reserve branch presidents over potential conflicts of interest, the knives are out in Washington for Jay Powell. In this video interview, Will assesses what personnel changes at the Fed may mean for the trajectory of US monetary policy and for the Fed’s role as US banking supervisor.

As if a tight labor market, rising inflation and widespread fuel shortages weren’t enough to contend with, the United Kingdom is also seeing a sharp deterioration in its relations with the European Union, and France especially. Nick examines what worsening cross-Channel relations could mean for the economies of the UK and EU.

A material difference has opened up in both the actions and signaling of global central banks, as they exit from pandemic-era monetary policy settings. On the hawkish side is the likes of the Federal Reserve and on the dovish side the European Central Bank and a raft of Asian policymakers. The question is who could be on the verge of making a policy mistake.

Asian economies are often lumped into the collective bucket of following “zero-Covid” elimination strategies. That has certainly been the case in most of the region’s big economies. However, there is increasingly an impetus by the better-vaccinated countries to fully reopen. Vincent surveys the landscape and draws some conclusions regarding preferred currency plays.

As investors have flipped between euphoria and dejection over the future of crypto-currencies and related digital assets, prices have had a crazy ride. In this video Will outlines a framework for thinking about valuations. Even if digital art sold as NFTs sticks around, the basic economics of their use case means they probably won't be great stores of value.

Ahead of Germany’s election in a couple of weeks, the center-left Social Democratic Party has recently climbed up the polls to eclipse the previously dominant Christian Democratic Union. If the polling is right, the SPD is likely to form a coalition government with Germany’s smaller parties. Nick breaks out the tea leaves to see what a political shift is likely to mean.

In the same week that the US military completed its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden outlined a more contained doctrine for US foreign policy. In this video interview, Yanmei argues against a declinist view of the Kabul dash for the exit, contending that the longer-term impact may be a much-needed reset of the American imperial project.

India has been a tough place for multinationals to make big capital investments. Just this week the country’s highest court cleared the way for anti-trust action against Amazon and Walmart’s online retail platforms. However, a counter-trend move has been the government backing away from a retrospective tax that has been deployed against foreign investors.

The big question is still about how durable the current burst of inflation will prove to be. Anatole and Louis joined Arthur to debate this—and everything else going on in the world economy—at our monthly global investment roundtable.

Global commodity prices have been on a tear in recent weeks due to strong global growth prospects and constricted supply. The macro picture, however, is murky, with China simultaneously being the driver of soaring iron ore prices while moving to tighten controls over property and infrastructure spending. Rosealea and Louis explained the overall outlook for metals and energy.

Markets have been roiled by rising US inflation that seems to be returning sooner than expected, and similar inflationary dynamics are starting to be seen in Europe. Our team of analysts addressed the inflation outlook in the US, Europe and emerging markets, and offered views on what it means for asset prices in these markets.

It is increasingly clear that shortages of semiconductors are both more widespread and intractable than first thought. In the near term, the fear is of cascading disruption along the Asian electronics value chain. In the medium term, however, it is possible that massive supply responses create a glut of chips that causes prices to eventually crater.

Joe Biden's enormous fiscal initiatives mark a potential sea change in the US government’s role in the economy. They may yet get watered down as the US president negotiates with more conservative members of his party, but tax and spend is clearly the new mantra in Washington DC. The question for investors is what this means for assets in the US and around the world.

As the US and Europe begin to emerge from the pandemic, Louis assesses the key relationships in global markets, Cedric asks whether Europe will have a summer this year and what the economic effects will be and Didier presents the “Yellow Jacket” multiplier, as he introduces a new asset allocation tool.

President Joe Biden has said that the US will make sweeping cuts to carbon dioxide emissions and impose tax hikes on the wealthy. For now, the US economy is recovering, but can this continue if risk takers pull in their horns as they will get less of the rewards?

Risk is alive and well in China even amid a record economic recovery. Antitrust authorities are turning their attention to the rest of China's internet platforms, financial regulators are taking a tougher line and Chinese equity markets are looking a bit wobbly. In yesterday's webinar, our panel of China analysts discussed the latest regulatory developments and their implications for markets.

Charles Gave likes to say he is a rules-based investor, and he’s never been short of ideas. In this webinar, Charles and Gavekal TrackMacro’s Didier Darcet presented their latest work on portfolio construction, including a tool to help fixed-income managers to get satisfactory returns despite punitively low yields.

In the long years between the 2008-09 financial crash and the 2020 Covid crisis the US stock market massively outperformed equities in the rest of the world. In recent quarters, however, the US market has lost its edge. Yesterday, Louis, KX and Udith weighed the merits of ex-US equities versus US stocks in a post-pandemic world.