Videos

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.

France accounts for around a quarter of outstanding sovereign debt in the eurozone and continues to be plagued by political instability. Over the Christmas break, the French government tried and again failed to pass a national budget. The worry is that such uncertainty starts to undermine economic confidence and tip the economy into a recession. Cedric acknowledges these risks but in this video explains why he thinks that France will not upset the European apple cart.

After two national guards were tragically shot by an Afghan national near the White House, the Trump administration has again tightened its immigration policy. The issue is that this stance comes with economic costs and potentially threatens the government’s stated aim of reindustrializing the United States. In this video interview, Tan Kai Xian explains how US policymakers will likely manage that balancing act.

In today’s Daily, Louis cited global consumer staple stocks as one of a few potential contrarian trades for 2026. Will takes a similar view and in this video explains five catalysts that could lead to US consumer staples outperforming in the coming year—and thereby breaking a long cycle of underperformance.

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?

A week of tariff chaos has left the US and China locked in an all-out trade war, with tariffs in both directions now over 100%. The two sides have dug in to maximalist positions, which spells bad news for both economies, and for global trade. Arthur Kroeber, Andrew Batson and Thomas Gatley discuss the economic, political and financial dimensions of this unprecedented crisis.

If all of Donald Trump's announced “reciprocal” tariffs go into effect on April 9, the effective levy on US imports will zoom up to over 25%, the highest since the early 1900s and an increase of nearly 20pp from the current level. The big question now is whether the rest of the world will bargain for lower rates, or accept high US tariffs as the new normal and adjust around them. Our team of country economists convened to analyze Wednesday's announcements and discuss what this all means for the global macro situation and for specific regions.

Having been stuck in a funk over the last year, India’s economy is showing signs of perking up. Yet investors continue to fret about the effects of US tariffs and increasingly see better opportunities in China’s cheaper equity market. In this webinar, Udith and Tom seek to disentangle these factors and offer views on whether this is the time to be playing India.

European policymakers face the biggest strategic upheaval since World War II and a potential trans-Atlantic trade war for good measure. On the plus side for those with a Keynesian bent, the European Union may be spurred to cast off self-imposed fiscal rules which have constrained its performance over the last 15 years. In this webinar, Anatole and Cedric assess the choices that Europe faces and what different outcomes will mean for growth and markets.

Technological optimism seems to be doing what macroeconomic policy could not: change foreign investors’ minds about China. At the same time the nascent rebound in the property market is at risk of stalling out amid a policy vacuum. And signals of greater comity between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have not prevented the escalation of US tariffs on China. In this webinar, our China team assesses the conflicting signals for the outlook for 2025.

DeepSeek stunned the world with the release of two new AI models with performance comparable to models from the US market leaders, but which the Chinese company developed at a fraction of the cost and with less powerful chips. Tilly Zhang, Gavekal’s technology analyst, founding partner Louis-Vincent Gave and US economist Will Denyer assessed the extent of DeepSeek’s achievement and examined what it means for China’s AI development, US export controls, and the future of the US tech stock bull market.

All eyes were on the White House after Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday to see the initial flurry of executive orders that may indicate his governing priorities. Would he pursuse a maximalist trade-protection agenda, or invite allies and rivals alike to the bargaining table? Would he move quickly towards mass deportations of Illegal immigrants or be more surgical in his approach? Our team sat down to unpack the flurry of news from Trump's first days in office.

Crypto-currencies had a stellar 2024, with a particularly strong run after Donald Trump’s win in the November election. The president-elect has appointed crypto enthusiasts to his cabinet and mused on adopting a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Our panel looked at both structural factors like the prospect of mass crypto adoption and more pressing cyclical issues such as how the vertiginously positioned asset class handles a likely more challenging liquidity environment in 2025.