Videos

Thursday saw an awkward meeting between Japan’s prime minister Sanae Takaichi and US president Donald Trump in the White House. The east Asian powerhouse wants to stay out of the US-led war in Iran but is massively reliant on gas and oil imported from the Persian Gulf. Udith explores the dilemmas faced by Japan’s policymakers, as they seek to weather an energy shock without sparking an adverse stagflationary economic cycle.

Since the United States-led war against Iran started, US assets have received a safe-haven bid. This reverses a narrative that had taken hold among global investors before the outbreak of hostilities to sell an increasingly unreliable America. The argument had developed that the US was proving a bad partner and pursuing currency debasement policies. In this video interview, Kai Xian discusses whether such a “sell America” trade had ever actually started and, looking through this war, what happens next to capital flows.

For Emmanuel Macron, jointly issued European Union bonds is an idea whose time has come. For Friedrich Merz, however, broad mutualization of European public debt remains a step too far. What is interesting is that despite these predictable positions in Paris and Berlin, a growing logic may nonetheless be pushing Europe toward larger-scale EU bond issuance.

Xi Jinping wants the renminbi to become a global reserve currency. That’s going to be tough as long as China operates capital controls, and there are few offshore renminbi assets for reserve managers to buy. One suggested solution is to make all Hong Kong listed equities tradable in renminbi. In this interview, Louis-Vincent Gave looks at how this proposal could work, and what it would mean for investors in Hong Kong’s financial markets.

In five years, China has greatly reduced its reliance on property and supporting industries as a driver of economic activity. While the building binge continues to cast a pall over the wider economy, the Chinese stock market has the “old economy” property sector in the rear-view mirror and is fully pricing in “new economy” industries built around advanced manufacturing and the energy transition.

The long rallies in gold and crypto from 2023 to 2025 were to a large extent driven by the US debasement trade. With recent market moves suggesting that these trends may now have run their course, Will Denyer digs into the underlying dynamics to examine whether the debasement trade is really over, and if so what this means for broader asset markets.

US President Donald Trump wants to make US housing more affordable and so assuage voter discontent ahead of November’s midterm elections. In this video interview, Kai Xian assesses measures that the administration has already tried or mooted, as well as others that could be on the docket. He considers what these might mean for housing activity and for the homebuilding industry.

In late January, Keir Starmer paid his first visit to China as UK prime minister, proclaiming his desire for “a more sophisticated relationship” between London and Beijing. In making his trip, Starmer becomes the latest middle-power head of government to head to China bearing a conciliatory message as relations with the US deteriorate. In this video interview, Tom Miller explores how this attempt at geoeconomic derisking could play out, and examines what it all means for global investors.

After Europe’s benchmark price for natural gas spiked by 40% between the first and third weeks of January, Cedric Gemehl examines the state of the continent’s gas stores, asks where European countries can source additional imports, and considers the longer term questions raised by Europe’s energy insecurity.

Human resources stocks are a niche corner of the US equity market that most investors will rarely focus on. However, Kai Xian thinks they are offering up useful signaling information about a range of macro factors which are currently causing big changes to the US labor market.

The global inflationary boom for the moment remains well set, with both monetary and fiscal settings in most economies remaining loose to very loose. The result is that equity markets continue to trend higher but in an increasingly differentiated pattern. At the same time, the fundamentals for OECD bonds remain terrible and investors are thus engaged in a desperate search for solid stores of value. Our panel reviewed the macro situation and explored viable asset allocation strategies.

Laila Khawaja joins Arthur Kroeber in a conversation about the many facets of the growing US-China technology rivalry. Topics include the question of who is winning the AI race, the politics of Nvidia's chip sales in China, the significance of the deal apparently struck this week to sell TikTok to US owners, and whether Trump and Xi can forge a bigger trade and tech agreement later this fall.

The US economy looks to be at an inflection point with the labor market softening and upward price pressures fading. Unnerved by tariffs early this year, investors seem persuaded that they will not spark a rapid spike in inflation. All the while, the future of the Federal Reserve as an independent institution is in play. Our panel pick through these key topics that are likely to dictate market action in the coming weeks.

So far in 2025, the US economy has defied all the worst-case forecasts of looming stagflation. In this Gavekal webinar, US economists Will Denyer and Tan Kai Xian assess the strength and depth of this apparent Goldilocks dynamic, consider the impact of the newly passed Big Beautiful Bill on the US budget, and discuss the implications for financial markets. Gavekal head of research Arthur Kroeber offers updates on the tariff war latest.

Investors last week seemed to be betting that the United States would hold off on directly attacking Iran. Now, after the weekend’s US airstrikes and Trump's push for a ceasefire, are all parties really ready to cease hostilities? Or is this just the start of a regional war in the Middle East that could severely disrupt oil supplies and spark a surge in the crude price? Our team assesses the latest developments on the ground and consider the vulnerabilities of the major economic regions should the worst occur and the price of oil skyrocket.

The meeting focused on China's economic performance, global influence and potential future scenarios. The panelists debated the potential of the renminbi as a reserve currency, China's economic model and capital controls, and the implications of China's debt situation for global markets.

China and the US are talking again, after the first phone call between Presidents Trump and Xi since Trump took office. But the path toward a substantive trade agreement is strewn with boulders. Arthur Kroeber and Andrew Batson discussed how China will handle the trade talks, what it will do to support its economy, and how seriously we should take its policy pivot towards more consumption-led growth.

For years, all investors needed was an overweight position in big US tech stocks balanced with a holding in long-dated US treasuries. Those days are over. So far in 2025, US tech stocks and US treasuries are both down, while select asset classes in Europe, Latin America and Asia have delivered handsome double-digit US dollar returns. In this webinar, Gavekal partners Louis Gave, Anatole Kaletsky and Will Denyer considered whether US markets can regain their mojo, or whether non-US assets will continue to outperform.

Investors were rewarded on Monday for their bets that a negotiated settlement will be reached in the United States-led trade war. This follows Britain and the US agreeing an outline trade deal, and an Anglo-Indian trade deal, suggesting that the old liberal trading order is not dead. Our team picked through these developments to assess if the trade war is over before it got going.

There is a growing consensus that the age of American exceptionalism is over, and that after years of riding the US tech boom, investors should diversify their portfolios away from US markets. But geoeconomic tensions are running high around the globe, and the world’s two biggest economies are exchanging salvos in a nasty trade war. So, which non-US markets and assets should investors favor and which should they avoid?