One of the key events of last week (and there were plenty) was the Fed’s decision and what Janet Yellen said in her press conference. Yellen shed some light (significant, I would say) about the Fed’s thought process towards the ‘normalization’ of monetary policy. Markets expected this information during the Jackson Hole meeting at the read more

There continues to be two fundamental risks or debates in financial markets: China’s convergence to pseudo-normal growth; and monetary policy normalization. Additionally, there is geopolitical noise, which has re-emerged in the last few weeks, and it matters at high frequency, but it is unlikely to have an effect on the global business cycle. Monetary policy read more

Markets this year, and especially these last few weeks, seem to be saying contradictory things. Major equity markets have shown no clear direction with non-trivial volatility. While on the other hand, debt markets seem to show a bearish global growth bias. There are many reasons for each of the markets to have done what they read more

Two weeks ago we participated in investor meetings at the Spring IMF Meetings in DC. One of the key concerns expressed by investors was a possible hard landing in China. By now this is a repetitive subject in our writings, but what concerns us as much as a hard landing is the apparently generalized view read more

The New different risks we highlighted in the previous note remain the 2 key market drivers: G7 monetary policy normalization (especially the US), and China’s business cycle and reform/rebalancing efforts. Obviously there are other themes and risks, as the US business cycle and the pace of the incipient European recovery, or the accumulation of emerging read more

The nature of the key risk factors has changed in a significant way. The main risk factors that threatened markets over the last 2-3 years have faded / been resolved / disappeared. Those risk factors shared a crucial feature, that their different resolution scenarios could and were imagined with some detail, and that their time-profile read more