Deep-dive analyses, regime reports, and strategic insights from our quantitative research team. The intelligence behind our allocations.
China buys roughly half of Russia's crude exports and anchors its trade. With US tariff powers now passed by Congress and Russian provocations on NATO's border, Beijing's choice will shape the war. Europe should make that choice costly to get wrong.
China’s subsidised industrial overcapacity is weakening Europe’s strategic sectors, from chemicals to clean tech and semiconductors. Europe needs faster trade defence, lower energy costs, and a clearer industrial doctrine to protect its economic sovereignty.
The UK’s macroeconomic weakness is not just cyclical. Brexit raised trade frictions with its largest market, while energy dependence exposed households and industry to price shocks, weakening growth, investment, productivity, and real incomes.
Europe’s startup weakness is not only regulation. The deeper problem is capital scale: smaller venture markets, weaker late-stage funding, fragmented national systems, and thinner exit markets prevent European startups from scaling at US speed.
Europe’s 2025 goods surplus masked a nearly €299bn energy trade deficit. Without imported fossil fuels, the EU’s goods balance would have been far stronger. Electrification and a real single energy market are now central to Europe’s external strength, industrial competitiveness, and strategic autonomy.
The EU’s Savings and Investments Union could unlock trillions in underused household savings, deepen capital markets, lower financing costs, and help close Europe’s annual investment gap. If fully implemented, it would strengthen innovation, resilience, and competitiveness against the US and China.
China’s economic weakness in 2026 is being driven by structural forces, not a short-term slowdown. A persistent real estate crisis, weak inflation, overcapacity, debt stress, and rapid aging are combining to drag on growth, confidence, and household wealth.
The US strategy of rapidly squeezing Iran through blockade pressure backfired when Hormuz disruption pushed oil sharply higher and raised inflation and recession fears. Economic fallout forced a quicker move toward negotiations than policymakers had anticipated.
Blocking Iran’s oil exports targets the core of its economy. Because oil revenues underpin the budget, foreign-exchange inflows, and rial stability, sustained disruption can worsen fiscal stress, accelerate inflation, and deepen long-term economic isolation.
US inflation has reaccelerated, with headline CPI rising to 3.3% year over year in March 2026. Energy prices, especially gasoline, drove the jump, while sticky core components and higher inflation expectations are making the Fed’s policy outlook more difficult.
A prolonged war is turning an energy shock into a broader growth crisis. Higher oil prices, weaker confidence, tighter financial conditions, and policy constraints are raising recession risks in both Europe and the US, with Europe facing the sharper immediate threat.
The 2025–2026 U.S. tariff regime has imposed clear short-term costs on the economy through higher inflation, weaker growth, costlier consumer goods, and export losses from retaliation. Whether those costs deliver lasting strategic gains remains highly uncertain.
The consumer discretionary sector badly lagged the broader market in 2025 as high borrowing costs, persistent inflation, weak sentiment, and tariff-related cost pressures squeezed both demand and margins.
Japan’s massive public debt has long been sustained by domestic ownership and ultra-low rates, but rising yields, fiscal expansion, and BoJ normalization are increasing the risk that debt servicing costs become materially harder to manage.
Oil is unlikely to return quickly to pre-war price levels even if the conflict ends. Damage to energy infrastructure, tighter inventories, higher freight and insurance costs, and a lasting geopolitical risk premium are keeping the market structurally tighter.
Germany’s 2026 outlook has weakened as energy shocks from the Iran conflict weigh on industrial activity, confidence, and fiscal balances. Growth forecasts have been cut, inflation revised higher, and the broader recovery remains fragile.
Australia’s inflation rebound in 2026 has pushed the RBA back into tightening mode. With headline and trimmed mean inflation above target and unemployment still low, rate cuts have been delayed and policy is likely to stay restrictive for longer than markets expected.
The US dollar’s medium-term outlook is turning bearish as yield support fades, reserve managers diversify away from dollar assets, and fiscal sustainability concerns push investors to demand a higher term premium.
Europe faces renewed stagflation risk if Middle East tensions keep oil above $100. Higher energy costs are pressuring industry, households, and ECB policy, raising the likelihood of weaker growth and more persistent inflation across the continent.
Turkey’s heavy dependence on imported energy is turning the 2026 oil shock into a major balance-of-payments risk. Higher oil prices are widening the current account deficit, weakening the lira, straining reserves, and complicating the fight against inflation.
The 2026 oil shock is putting emerging market currencies under heavy pressure. Higher energy import bills, stronger dollar funding stress, and rising inflation are driving depreciation, limiting policy flexibility, and increasing the risk of a broader EM FX crisis.
Asia is facing a dual shock from the 2026 Hormuz crisis: higher oil prices and weaker currencies. With much of the region’s crude imports passing through the Strait, rising energy costs, dollar strength, and FX pressure are threatening both growth and inflation stability.
Expectations for a broad 2026 rate-cut cycle have been sharply scaled back as high oil prices revive inflation risks. Central banks now face a narrow path between protecting growth and preventing inflation expectations from becoming unanchored.
The 2026 Iran conflict has pushed oil above $100 and revived a global stagflation threat. Growth forecasts are being cut while inflation expectations rise, leaving central banks facing the same painful tradeoff seen during the major oil shocks of the 1970s.
Egypt has entered the latest regional shock with record FX reserves and a more flexible currency strategy. By allowing the pound to adjust while intervening selectively, the central bank is preserving reserves, reducing confidence risks, and signaling disciplined macro management.
Sustained oil above $100 is becoming a major inflation risk for the US in 2026. With energy costs feeding into transport, manufacturing, and household bills, elevated crude prices could keep CPI above target, reduce the odds of rate cuts, and raise stagflation concerns.
The USD basket fell sharply despite heightened US-Iran tensions, reflecting market confidence in de-escalation and a crisis structure that left the dollar less supported than in prior geopolitical shocks.
Each move above 4.4% in the 10-year US Treasury yield appears to threaten the market’s rate-cut narrative, increasing pressure for geopolitical de-escalation. The result is a pattern in which Iran negotiation headlines seem to emerge just as yields begin to endanger the equity rally.
Germany’s industrial model was built on cheap Russian gas, and that advantage has disappeared. With energy prices still far above pre-crisis levels and domestic demand weakening, the country now faces a structural competitiveness problem that risks dragging down the broader eurozone.
Europe’s energy security is becoming the core requirement for sovereign policymaking and industrial competitiveness. A credible 2040 roadmap built around higher renewable penetration and expanded nuclear capacity could cut external fossil fuel dependence below 20% and strengthen Europe’s geopolitical leverage.
US economy, employment, nonfarm payrolls, Federal Reserve, macro, dollar, labor market, rates, recession risk
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