Videos

The effects of the Iran war are being felt by national power systems globally, but the United States is relatively insulated due to its abundant domestic sources of hydrocarbons. There are, however, winners and losers from this energy shock within the US power system, says Kai Xian. In this video interview he outlines who is up and who is down.

The open-source artificial-intelligence agent OpenClaw has become wildly popular in China and the wider AI world. In this interview, Tilly dissects how OpenClaw plays to the advantages of Chinese AI developers, and its implications for the economics of AI in China—as well as how it might encourage greater take-up of Chinese AI models more broadly.

It is not just US retail gasoline prices that have risen since the start of the Iran war. Long-dated US treasury yields are also up, which implies higher interest rates for new mortgage loans. In this video interview, Tan Kai Xian assesses the impact on US housing affordability and examines whether the US government will implement damage control measures.

Over the last week, voters have cautiously backed centrist politicians in a series of European elections. The process of political fragmentation has hardly reversed in Europe, but many voters are seeking practical answers to difficult questions at a time when Europe feels besieged in both strategic and economic terms. In this interview, Cedric discusses what this more realistic mood means for European Union integration.

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.

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?

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.