Across the world, central bankers roped together on Rates Mountain need the fog from the war in the Middle East to lift. Until there is clarity on this, then the descent from high rates is over, and it could be safer to seek refuge on higher ground www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

The Mag 7 is becoming the Brics of tradeable concepts: an incongruous group with diverging fundamentals and fortunes. As the Faangs gave way to Mag 7 (who still speaks of Netflix?) the Mag 7 is starting to give way to something else, too www.ft.com/content/8e4a...

Saying “all this could end very badly” now will not count as prescience, even if all this does end very badly. It is a costless thing to say, the risks are obvious, the buyers are adults, and there’s no crying at the casino www.ft.com/content/8e4a...

Hormuz, U.S. blacklists & Europe’s failed fighter-jet project may look like separate headlines. In fact, they mark the same turning point: security & economics have become deeply intertwined. For markets, this opens a new era of strategic anxiety ecrresearch.com/research/glo...

Hormuz, U.S. blacklists & Europe’s failed fighter-jet project may look like separate headlines. In fact, they mark the same turning point: security & economics have become deeply intertwined. For markets, this opens a new era of strategic anxiety ecrresearch.com/research/glo...

Rising earnings growth expectations tend to correlate with lower returns. The intuition is clear — if you’re braced for the best, you’ve set yourself up for disappointment www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

Rates and liquidity are always the convenient explanation when bitcoin falls, but the real issue is that it has no fundamental value www.ft.com/content/830c...

@katie0martin.ft.com: Just when you thought you were on top of gold’s last regime shift, it seems to have had another. Stocks recovered from the Iran shock, and then some, but gold is stuck in a rut. Now, as tech has been whacked, gold has been whacked with them. Tails you lose,heads you also lose?

As readers of Benoit Mandelbrot know, when a market breaks its trend, it does not mean a reversal is coming. Instead, it means that more or less any damn thing can happen, until a new trend develops www.ft.com/content/8b33...

Al decennia hoor ik sterk onderbouwde pleidooien voor een Europees leger of in elk geval sterk geïntegreerde Europese strijdkrachten. Maar bij berichten als deze zakt de moed - als die er al was - je toch weer in de schoenen (en verder). www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

A general to @shashj.bsky.social: Deterrence depends on credibility & clear communication; it isn't strengthened by theatrical displays. When war becomes a political aesthetic—its language & symbols used for signalling rather than strategy—armies risk becoming props and sacrifice a form of branding.

[email protected]: “War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly,” Eisenhower declared, speaking from his own experience of high command. “The soldier above all other people prays for peace,” said MacArthur. Mr Hegseth’s message is rather different: “Lethality is your calling card.”

Likely, Trump’s use of Section 301 of the trade act of 1974 to reconstruct his tariff wall is more legally durable. But with the justifications they have chosen so far the Trump administration may also be making them more politically durable www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

A core argument for Trump’s trade wars is that economic security is national security. Just about anything can qualify as a target for tariffs. Imported kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities currently face national security tariffs. Semiconductors do not www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Het veranderende geopolitieke klimaat zorgt nu werkelijk voor gure winden door de Europese welvaartsstaten www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The challenge for proponents of AI is that the economic pain will be more frontloaded and visceral than any gains in productivity and jobs. It takes time for industries to optimise their use of technology to create new value and openings www.ft.com/content/b442...

Bond markets have been warning since March that the likely direction for rates is up not down. But until Friday, the stock markets had been treating their elder siblings in bonds as a wet blanket www.ft.com/content/8650...

The US thumbscrews are being tightened ever more on Cuba. Could it be Trump's goal to bring down the regime in Havana before the midterms? Voters with Cuban heritage are highly important for several essential congressional and local races in the midterm elections. @economist.com

Federer: In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80%. What percentage of points do you think I won in those matches? Only 54%. When you lose every 2nd point, you learn not to dwell on every shot. Whatever game you play in life, sometimes you’re going to lose @nytimes.com

Iran, AI & Debt: Are markets pricing in a fragile triple dividend?Hormuz can break markets overnight. Debt grinds them down daily. AI might still save the day. My latest report: → Will Hormuz stabilise? → Real AI productivity boost? → Sustainable global debt? ecrresearch.com/research/glo...

From January to April of 2026, Taiwan exported $2.50 to the U.S. for every dollar to mainland China www.politico.eu/newsletter/f...

Trump's current trade deals are non-binding frameworks, more Section 301 actions are on deck, and the U.S.-China truce lapses later this fall — leaving businesses to plan around tariffs that are still shifting under them www.axios.com/newsletters/...

Trump is primarily focused on the war, or on personal projects like the ballroom, a White House UFC fight, and America’s 250th birthday. GOP lawmakers, meanwhile, are itching for more wins to pitch constituents back home www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Donald Trump is increasingly unrestrained. Republicans in Congress are increasingly unimpressed. The two approaches suggest their symbiotic yet often lopsided relationship is fraying under election year pressure www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Trump's new levies, if implemented, would increase the effective US tariff rate by just 0.5 percentage point from its current level of 10.7%, if introduced once the Section 122 tariffs expire www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Alphabet's announced plans to issue $80bn in equity to fund its AI spending spree. The last time any of the Magnificent 7 tech stocks sold equity to raise money was Meta in 2013. Will more of the “hyperscalers” follow suit? www.ft.com/content/c9d5...

No amount of technical advance can keep any market advancing as quickly as this forever. But for now, the strength is overwhelming and helping to tide capital markets through some dire straits www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

A week ago, Points of Return concentrated on the fact that Micron had just topped a trillion dollars in market cap. Seven days is a long time. It’s now topped $1.2tn. Last week’s growth is equivalent to the entire market valuation of McDonald’s or Verizon www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

The energy crisis is steadily puncturing the notion of an invincible China. Layer by layer, the buffers that Beijing has built to shield itself from external shocks are showing their limits www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

Sales multiples are by far the highest in history, so much rests on both revenues and margins delivering on their promise www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

Since Trump’s return to office, the U.S. has been involved in nearly a dozen military operations around the world www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/u...

Xi wants to embed the party and its security apparatus so deeply in daily life that no trouble, however minor or apolitical, can arise. Since 2000, China has held nearly 900 police-training sessions for at least 138 countries www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/w...

What Europe could learn from Wall-E. My latest for @brusselstimes.com www.brusselstimes.com/opinion/2165...

Europe wants to insulate its house, replace the locks, lower the energy bill, install an alarm system and learn to box — all at the same time — while the neighbours are arguing and the old landlord is no longer as reliable as he used to be www.brusselstimes.com/opinion/2165... @brusselstimes.com

Trump's supporters stick. That’s the lesson he learned from a criminal conviction that didn’t slow him down one bit and from fans’ interpretations of his crudeness as authenticity, his cruelty as boldness, his thievery as entrepreneurial genius www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/o...

Trump minimized the pain felt by less affluent Americans as he bragged about the extravagance of the new ballroom. It’s a shame he didn’t live two and a half centuries ago, in France. He and Marie Antoinette would have gotten on like a palace on fire www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/o...

Iran, AI & schuld: markt gokt op drievoudig goed nieuws Hormuz zette het financiële kaartenhuis plotseling onder druk. Schuld knaagt al langer aan de fundamenten. AI is de mogelijke reparatieploeg. Mijn nieuwste GPA ecrresearch.com/sites/defaul...

The Texas primary outcome shows president Trump’s hold over the Republican Party and at the same time gives Democrats hope of winning the seat in midterm elections in November. MAGA primary wins could backfire painfully for Trump during the midterms.

While Americans and Europeans have been repeating that China cannot innovate, China invented the largest and fastest production and construction machine in history, right under their noses papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... HT @semafor.com

With roughly 8 million factories and 2.8 billion buildings globally, it is cheaper and far more scalable to adapt robots to human environments than to rebuild the physical world around them www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

A factory worker in India who uses the wearable technology to capture his daily tasks: “it feels like work­ing in your own grave, while you make your own cas­ket.” www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

Investors are offered a choice between focusing on inflation & debt servicing risks or on a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and an AI boom that doesn't stop until there are data centres in space and permanently higher productivity growth back on earth www.ft.com/content/4e18...

While the focus is on Washington and Tehran, the path to ending the war also runs through Beijing www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Het duurt in Europa 34 maanden voor een chipfabriek kan gaan produceren, tegen 19 maanden in Taiwan. Besluiten over subsidies in de EU duren tussen één jaar en twee jaar www.fme.nl/system/files... HT @fd.nl

Assume that Hormuz reopens. That leaves producers, shippers & insurers with a dilemma: can they gamble on a return to normal in the Gulf when there is no guarantee that America & Iran will reach a final deal, nor that the ceasefire will be extended again? www.economist.com/middle-east-...

Britain’s initial EU bid succeeded only after 12yrs. A similar timeline would imply more than a generation had passed between the 2016 vote & Bre-entry, a suitable timeframe for a nation to change its mind. The journey would be long, tortuous - & worth it www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

When it comes to defense, England is everyone’s favourite uncle. But it is suffering from Downton Abbey syndrome. It keeps up the pretence, but it doesn’t have the funds www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

Musk fan boys always claim that he is the reincarnation of Thomas Edison, but he is Edison’s contemporary, PT Barnum Musk is not an inventor; he is the ultimate hype artist of our time www.ft.com/content/285f...

Taxpayers who funded the basic research that allowed companies like SpaceX to exist (ditto Tesla and X) will get no stake in the wealth being created by billionaires in space, the largest public commons of all www.ft.com/content/285f...

Gulf wealth isn’t just an economic tool, it’s also a geopolitical weapon: it buys influence and allies. It can steady economies, sway bailouts and deepen ties with Washington www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...