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Black Friday: Retailers finally have the right amount of stock

Black Friday arrived with an unfamiliar sight across American retail: tidy shelves, disciplined inventory, and the near-total absence of panic clearance sales.

Thanksgiving: Bond investors finally have something to be thankful for

As American families gathered for Thanksgiving, fixed-income fund managers enjoyed a rare moment of genuine gratitude.

Moody's warns on America's debt

Are financial conditions tight or loose? Depends who you ask

Ask a macro hedge fund manager whether financial conditions are tight or loose, and the answer will depend entirely on which financial conditions index (FCI) they consult.

Inflation hits 3.2%. The last mile begins

The October consumer price index provided welcome relief to equity bulls, with headline inflation dropping to 3.2 per cent and core prices advancing at their slowest annual pace in two years.

Diwali: India's festive boom runs on credit

As millions celebrated Diwali across India, cash registers rang to the sound of an unprecedented consumer spending boom.

Singles' Day: China's shoppers have lost their nerve

China’s annual Singles’ Day shopping extravaganza has long served as a glittering showcase of consumer animal spirits and domestic consumption growth.

WeWork's collapse: how leases became debt

The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of WeWork marks the official conclusion of one of the most extravagant corporate valuation bubbles in venture capital history.

The Treasury borrows less than feared, and bonds soar

Fixed-income markets experienced one of their most explosive duration rallies in recent memory following the Treasury’s quarterly refunding announcement.

The recession rule that's flashing amber

Macroeconomic forecasting is littered with flawed empirical heuristics, but the Sahm Rule has earned a near-sacred reputation among monetary economists.

The Treasury blinks

Confronted with a sovereign debt market on the verge of systemic indigestion and ten-year yields flirting with 5.0 per cent, the US Treasury executed a tactical retreat on 31 October.

Halloween: The zombie companies are rising

For more than a decade, zero-interest-rate monetary policy functioned as a financial life-support machine for fundamentally unviable enterprises.

Alphabet spends more, grows less, and pays for it

Alphabet’s third-quarter earnings report delivered an instructive lesson in modern equity market unforgiveness.

The bond vigilantes are back

The legendary bond vigilantes—the institutional investors who punish undisciplined sovereign borrowers by aggressively dumping their debt—have emerged from their three-decade hibernation.

The 10-year hits 5%. Why now?

On 19 October, the benchmark ten-year US Treasury yield touched 4.99 per cent, bringing the totemic 5.0 per cent threshold into direct sight for the first time since July 2007.

China's hidden local debt problem

Beijing’s attempts to defuse its municipal debt crisis have entered an intricate phase of balance-sheet alchemy.

Banks' profit peak is here

Third-quarter earnings reports from America’s premier banking institutions painted a superficially glittering picture.

After the Hamas attack, the rush to safety faded fast

The horrific Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October initially triggered the standard geopolitical playbook across trading desks: an instinctive flight to safe-haven assets, bidding up gold, crude oil, and US Treasuries.

Strong jobs, falling bonds

The September employment report delivered an absolute blowout, with non-farm payrolls expanding by an astonishing 336,000 jobs—nearly double consensus forecasts.

Washington's chaos now has a price

Congress managed to avoid a catastrophic federal government shutdown with hours to spare by passing a 45-day continuing resolution on 30 September.

Student loans are back, and shops will feel it

For forty-three million Americans, the three-year pandemic holiday from federal student loan payments officially ends on 1 October.

Long bonds are selling off for a new reason

A profound shift has occurred in the sovereign debt market.

The Fed takes back half its rate cuts

The Federal Open Market Committee's September meeting delivered an unmistakable hawkish message wrapped in a neutral policy hold.

Is "higher for longer" already priced in?

Equity markets spent the summer pricing in a benign 'goldilocks' scenario, where inflation fades painlessly and central banks embark on an orderly cycle of monetary easing.

The UAW strike's bill for Detroit

The United Auto Workers' historic strike against Detroit’s 'Big Three'—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—marks a watershed moment for corporate labour economics.

How weak will Japan let the yen go?

The yen’s relentless slide toward 147 against the dollar has put currency traders on high alert for official intervention from the Ministry of Finance.

Unemployment rose, for a good reason

When the headline unemployment rate climbed from 3.5 to 3.8 per cent in August, knee-jerk commentary warned of cyclical deterioration.

Anniversary: Our first year, graded

One year ago, this column commenced with a simple premise: that the most aggressive central bank tightening cycle in forty years would inevitably collide with private balance sheets.

Saudi Arabia keeps oil above $90

Riyadh has re-established itself as the undisputed price-maker of the global energy market.

Labor Day: The job market is cooling the right way

For eighteen months, monetary orthodoxy insisted that cooling inflation required engineering a painful surge in unemployment.

Arm's IPO: scarcity is the selling point

Masayoshi Son has always been a connoisseur of financial spectacle, and the public listing of Arm represents his most calculated engineering yet.

Bonds finally pay more than inflation

The sovereign bond market has crossed a monumental psychological threshold.

Economists can't agree on where rates should settle

The annual Jackson Hole symposium has exposed the deep intellectual fractures dividing monetary theorists.

What is the "right" interest rate anyway?

Country Garden and the end of China's property model

When Country Garden, once China’s largest and most reputable private property developer, failed to meet $22.5 million in international bond coupon payments, the final pillar of China’s private real estate model cracked.

China's prices are falling. Its currency could be next

Deflation is officially stalking the Chinese economy, and the People’s Bank of China faces an acute monetary trilemma.

Why long bonds pay more — two very different answers

The relentless ascent of ten-year Treasury yields toward 4.1 per cent has ignited a fierce theoretical debate across fixed-income desks.

America is borrowing like it's in a recession. It isn't

Running substantial fiscal deficits during severe economic contractions is standard Keynesian doctrine: automatic stabilizers kick in, tax receipts fall, and public spending cushions the decline.

The Treasury needs more money, and companies will feel it

The sovereign borrowing machine is accelerating, and the private sector is about to feel the draft.

America loses its AAA again. Does it matter?

Is the economy really this strong?

On paper, the American macroeconomic juggernaut appears unstoppable.

One more hike, then what?

With futures markets pricing an overwhelming ninety-eight per cent probability of a quarter-point rate increase at the July FOMC meeting, the outcome of the policy decision is a foregone conclusion.

Why banks are selling their best loans

In the banking sector, capital management has taken a pragmatic and defensive turn.

Is Japan about to loosen its grip on bonds?

The Bank of Japan remains the world’s last monetary outlier, but its grip on the domestic government bond market is becoming increasingly untenable.

Inflation hits 3%. The easy part is over

When headline US consumer price inflation dropped to 3.0 per cent in June, financial commentators rushed to declare the war on inflation won.

Inflation is falling without a recession. Can it last?

Macroeconomic optimists have found their gospel in the recent deceleration of consumer price inflation.

Prime Day: What Amazon's discounts say about inflation

Amazon’s annual Prime Day has grown into an informal gauge of American consumer resilience and retail pricing dynamics.

Banks passed the stress test. Now comes the real test

The Federal Reserve’s annual stress tests have evolved into an elaborate regulatory set-piece.

Independence Day: Washington is paying factories to come home

The global race for industrial reshoring has transformed corporate capital allocation from a private optimization exercise into a state-subsidised land grab.

Why British homeowners feel rate rises faster than anyone

The transmission mechanism of monetary policy is rarely uniform across advanced economies, but the United Kingdom offers a case study in acute structural sensitivity.