Videos

Donald Trump’s attempts to lean on Federal Reserve policymakers to cut US interest rates are a reminder that central bank independence is not set in stone, and that monetary policy everywhere is potentially at risk of political interference. In this week’s interview, Gavekal European economist Cedric Gemehl assesses the vulnerability of the Bank of England and the European Central Bank in an age of rising political populism.

The White House seems set on packing the Federal Reserve with figures who will deliver easier monetary policy. As such, the lead up to this week’s policy setting meeting has seen a burst of activity involving Fed personnel. In this interview, Will discusses what all this means for near-term interest rate setting and for governance at the central bank in the longer term.

With France now on its fifth prime minister in two years, and protesters aiming to block the streets of French cities, commentators are increasingly asserting that France—and more broadly Europe—is now ungovernable. That may be overstating the case. But as Charles Gave points out in this video interview, with debt now rising faster than GDP in a number of major European economies, the continent is heading into a nasty debt trap.

Wednesday’s grand military parade through Beijing and the earlier Tianjin summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, hosted by Xi Jinping and attended by both Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin, have emphasized the growth of economic partnerships on the Eurasian landmass in defiance of the established US-led international order. In this video interview, Tom Miller assesses the depth of India’s diplomatic reengagement with China, and considers the economic implications of the strengthening Eurasian relations.

This week, US President Donald Trump met his South Korean counterpart at the White House in a summit intended to reset the two countries’ economic relations. For the American side, whose stated aim is to reestablish dominance as a maritime power, a key request has been engaging Korean specialists to invest in US domestic shipbuilding. This marks another instance of activist US industrial policy that promises to create winners and losers among the affected companies. In this interview, Kai Xian explains who is likely to benefit most from the initiative.

When Jerome Powell stands up on Friday to speak for the last time at the Jackson Hole symposium as Federal Reserve chair, he will have one eye on his legacy as principal defender of the Fed’s independence in troubled times. But investors will be focused at least as much on whether he offers any guidance on the Fed’s September 17th interest rate decision.

There is a difference between the typical story told about China in the West and the reality on the ground, says Tom, who just came back from a month-long visit. Tom lived in China from 2000 to 2015 and is impressed by the improvements made in recent years—despite several big policy errors—noting that the quality of life is approaching high-income-country status. On the flip side, the “anything goes” spirit that characterized the China of decades past, and encouraged people to take economic risks, has disappeared.

The past week has been eventful for those preoccupied with the US economy, with fairly weak data releases and the resignation of one Federal Reserve governor. In this week’s interview, Kai Xian examines what this might portend for interest rates and the performance of US equities through the rest of 2025 and into next year.

With €3trn in assets, Europe’s pension funds are investment giants. But they have long been lumbering and risk-averse giants. Now, Cedric Gemehl argues, they are about to discover a new-found appetite for risky assets, and that at the margin this shift will favor European equities over US equities and European government bonds.

In recent days, there’s been a flurry of trade “deals” between the US and Asian countries, ahead of the August 1 deadline to avoid the Trump administration’s punitive tariffs announced six months ago. Udith unpacks how these framework arrangements are shaping Asia’s macro environment—and what they could mean for markets, particularly the potential for a coordinated regional interest rate easing cycle.

China's Communist Party is gearing up to hold its Third Plenum later this month, an event where top leader Xi Jinping will have a platform to articulate and possibly revise his vision for the economy. With domestic consumers in the doldrums, and trade tensions escalating, is a course correction for China coming? In this webinar our team of China experts explained what to expect, and not to expect, from this high-level conclave.

France goes to the polls this weekend in the first of two elections to choose a new national assembly. Voters are being offered starkly different visions of the way the country should be governed, and a lot is at stake for investors who have provided generous funding over the years to the French government. In this webinar, our French experts assess the race and offer an analysis of what different outcomes could mean for the pricing of French assets and those across the eurozone.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi will get a third consecutive term in office, but his policy agenda is set to be constrained by the pressures of running a coalition government. Investors are worried that a hitherto pro-business government will become more captive to labor interests.

After a worrying rebound in the first quarter, US inflation cooled off a little in April, rekindling hopes of interest rate cuts later this year. Are those hopes well placed? And what does it mean for markets? Meanwhile, the opinion polls suggest that Donald Trump may prevail in November’s election. Chief US Economist Will Denyer and US Analyst Tan Kai Xian address all these issues and more.

Most investors and financial analysts take the stability of the global monetary system for granted. However, each of the distinguished speakers in this three-way conversation thinks that China will change the global monetary system, they just don’t agree on how, and how fast it will be changed.

The policy approaches of major economies are diverging, leading to unstable currency markets with more than a hint of beggar-thy-neighbor at work. Our team of country specialists seek to explain what comes next.

China’s property market is off to an awful start to 2024, and the government’s efforts to shore up the sector appear to be gaining no traction. Rosealea Yao and Xiaoxi Zhang join Christopher Beddor to unpack what exactly is driving the recent weakness and why policymakers are not doing more to help, as well as what it all means for commodity markets, the financial sector and economic growth ahead.

In this webinar Gavekal’s analysts review the themes driving growth across the world’s major economic regions, and discuss how macro developments are likely to drive financial markets over the remainder of 2024.

With inflation reaccelerating in the US, energy prices rising and escalating conflict in the Middle East, 2024 is beginning to feel uncomfortably reminiscent of the early 1970s. In this webinar, Gavekal’s founding partners examine how investors have mispriced the risk of permanently higher inflation, and discuss how to structure portfolios for a less forgiving macro environment in which bonds no longer serve to hedge exposure to equities.

This webinar examines the probable extent of anti-China protectionism around the world, assesses the consequences for China's manufacturing industries and growth outlook, and gauges the risk to other economies of Chinese retaliation.