Archive

December 11, 2025
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Monetary Policy Tide Is Turning Up

  • Markets are already pricing the return of rate hikes in 2026 for Canada, Australia and New Zealand, while policymakers elsewhere are starting to warn of the possibility.
  • Transitional support to structural adjustments needs unwinding, as Canada signals most prominently. Broader activity resilience and inflation reveal the risk of overstimulation.
  • The BoE already committed a policy mistake by easing too early, and is split by those recognising the persistent danger. Market pricing remains too dovish for 2026.

By Philip Rush

December 08, 2025
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2026 Politics: Nine Guesses & A Certainty

  • In what promises to be another year fraught with uncertainty, politics and markets will again be dominated by the United States in general and Donald Trump in particular.
  • Widely differing views of equity market prospects demonstrate this, i.e. the ‘bubble is about to burst’ doomsayers versus the bullish seeming consensus on Wall Street.
  • However, the biggest challenge facing investors is focusing on what really matters amid the continuing ‘noise’ emanating from the Trump Administration in particular.

By Alastair Newton

December 04, 2025
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BoE Survey Says Stagflation Survives

  • CFOs keep telling the BoE their prices will rise by 3.5% in 2026, with wage increases similarly substantial. There has been no significant break lower in over 18 months.
  • Employment plans have also deteriorated, lending some support to the dovish case as well. But this side is an unreliable signal, while inflation has proved brutally accurate.
  • Doves need the employment aspect to be true, but the transmission to prices not to be. This survey signals upside inflation risks that should discourage rate cuts in 2026.

By Philip Rush

December 03, 2025
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Activity Thaws Into Winter

  • The worst services PMIs thawed in November, broadening growth even as averages held steady. Activity in the US services ISM has trended up to exceed the PMI data now.
  • A slight fading of stagflationary pressures in the latest US surveys probably balances out in the Fed’s policy trade-off. We still fear that it is easing excessively.
  • Rising unemployment rates in the US and UK are concerns not experienced in most of the world. This theme feeds their recent divergence from the global surprise tendency.

By Philip Rush

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