New York Times (October 3)
“Markets are on edge about the risk of another oil shock. The price of crude has been relatively stable over the past year, apart from brief spikes.” Now, however, concern is focused on the potential “economic cost of a new war in the Middle East.” Estimates of the potential cost are wide-ranging and speculative, but “an escalation of fighting between Israel and Iran could cause oil prices to spike and send a chill through the global economy.”
Tags: Chill, Crude, Economic cost, Escalation, Fighting, Iran, Israel, Markets, Middle East, Oil prices, Oil shock, Risk, Speculative, Spikes, Stable, War
Fortune (September 30)
Hedge fund veteran Mark Spitznagel “previously said markets would rally as the Fed eases in a Goldilocks phase, but has also warned a recession is coming and that rate cuts are also the opening signal for big reversals down the line. In the current environment, that means in the biggest market bubble in history will soon pop, eventually prompting the Fed to ‘do something heroic’ but doom the economy to stagflation.”
Tags: Bubble, Doom, Economy, Fed, Goldilocks phase, Hedge-fund, Markets, Rally, Rate cuts, Recession, Reversals, Spitznagel, Veteran
Financial Times (September 27)
China’s biggest stimulus package since the pandemic has “supercharged markets, putting Chinese stocks on track for their best week since 2008.” The massive package boasts “billions of dollars from the central bank to support the stock market, policy rate cuts, measures to boost bank liquidity and efforts to stabilise China’s prolonged property crisis, including a 50-basis point interest rate cut for mortgage holders.” Nevertheless, it may not be enough “to reignite consumer confidence in the world’s second-largest economy.”
Tags: 2008, Central bank, China, Markets, Mortgage, Pandemic, Property crisis, Rate cuts, Stimulus, Stock market, Stocks, Supercharged
Washington Post (September 19)
Europe faces many challenges, but the largest is structural. “The E.U. is still not really one big thing, but a collection of smaller ones. This makes it difficult for companies to scale” or for the EU to pursue a coherent strategy. “Mr. Draghi’s report has many good ideas — to unify budgets, markets and strategies; to streamline rules to encourage innovation. At its core, the message is one that Europeans have heard before: For Europe to thrive, it must act as Europe.”
Tags: Budgets, Challenges, Companies, Draghi, E.U., Europe, Markets, Rules, Scale, Strategies, Strategy, Streamline, Structural, Unify
New York Times (September 8)
“Even by August’s typically volatile standards, markets have been especially choppy this month, with some of the biggest intraday stock swings of the year occurring over the past week.” Earlier in the year, corporate profits allayed investor fears, helping to “drive an impressive rally in the S&P 500. But this quarter has been more mixed, as multiple companies warned of declining consumer demand.” We may be approaching “the end of ‘fun-flation.’”
Tags: Allayed, August, Choppy, Consumer demand, Corporate profits, Intraday, Investor fears, Markets, Mixed, Rally, S&P 500, Stock swings, Volatile
Wall Street Journal (April 22)
Giant investment companies like Blackstone, Franklin Templeton, BlackRock and KKR “are taking over the financial system.” They now “control sums rivaling the economies of many large countries. They are pushing into new businesses, blurring the lines that define who does what on Wall Street and nudging once-dominant banks toward the sidelines.” Their outsize roles are, according to investors, creating “risks markets have never encountered before.”
Tags: Banks, BlackRock. KKR, Blackstone, Blurring lines, Countries, Financial system, Franklin Templeton, Investment, Investors, Markets, Risks, Sidelines, Wall Street
Financial Times (March 17)
“A strange thing happened this week: calm.” U.S. data revealed higher than expected price inflation. “This time around, however, government bonds wobbled only slightly and both US and global stocks held it together around record highs.” The absence of drama indicates “interest rates are shedding their suffocating dominance over global markets, and that stocks are climbing not because they are huffing the speculative fumes of imminent and aggressive potential rate cuts but because they’re worth it.”
Tags: Calm, Dominance, Global, Government bonds, Inflation, Interest rates, Markets, Rate cuts, Record highs, Speculative, Stocks, Suffocating, U.S.
The Economist (February 10)
“This year investors in Chinese stocks have been on a hair-raising ride. Even as America’s S&P 500 index reached record highs, markets in China and Hong Kong shed $1.5trn in January alone…. The decline signals a fundamental problem. Investors abroad and at home once saw China’s government as a dependable steward of the economy. Now this trust has seeped away, with severe consequences for China’s growth.”
Tags: $1.5trn, China, Consequences, Decline, Dependable, Economy, Government, Growth, Hair raising, Hong Kong, Investors, Markets, S&P 500, Steward, Stocks, Trust
The Economist (December 28)
“It has been a tricky year atop the corporate ladder. Sluggish growth in many markets has set bosses scrambling to rein in costs just as inflation has spurred their workers to demand hefty pay rises. Fractious geopolitics and toxic culture wars have left corporate chieftains feeling like tightrope-walkers. The craze for generative artificial intelligence (ai) has had them fretting over looming technological disruption, too.”
Tags: AI, Bosses, Corporate ladder, Costs, Culture wars, Fractious, Geopolitics, Inflation, Markets, Pay rises, Sluggish growth, Technological disruption, Toxic, Tricky, Workers
Institutional Investor (December 19)
Investors and CEOs using their power to change the world around them provides the best hope for restoring value-creating potential to relationships between public companies and asset owners. But it may not be good enough. Investors and companies that seek to remain in public markets and derive value from their relationships will need ways to find each other in the masses of intermediaries between them, special tools for using this approach, and plans for navigating the inevitable collisions with short-term activists.”
Tags: Asset owners, CEOs, Hope, Intermediaries, Investors, Markets, Navigating, Potential, Power, Public companies, Relationships, Restoring, Value, Value-creating
