On Global Markets

This week three Republican senators called upon President Biden to formally block a take-over of U.S. Steel by the Japanese firm, Nippon Steel.  As senators Vance, Hawley, and Rubio noted in their letter, whilst President Biden has made clear his opposition to such a take-over in the past he has yet to formally intervene. By […] 

There are two veins that tend to run through the tone of European economic commentary when the continent’s residents – or at least those in Western half – compare themselves to the United States. Broadly put these can be classified as either hand-wringing pessimism or rather smug complacency. The pessimistic case is based on the […] 

Evidence based policymaking is something which, in public at least, most public servants now aspire to. Think tanks on both sides of the Atlantic have taken to using the term over the last two decades to describe policymaking which is rooted in evidence, data, and research rather than driven by ideological reasoning. As one might […] 

It is, as the saying goes, difficult to make predictions; especially about the future. That may have always been the case but the issue was especially acute in the spring and summer of 2020. The covid pandemic and the associated lock-down and stay-at-home orders designed to constrain the growth of the virus forced widespread changes […] 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the hot new thing. Any firm which can plausibly claim any exposure to the rapidly developing technology has seen the price of its equity soar over the past year as investors seek to cash in. The most booster-ish proponents of AI see it as a game changer for economic growth, ushering […] 

Short-selling has a long history and so too do government bans on actively betting on asset prices falling. Indeed short-selling, and government interventions to prevent it, are just about as old as the very concept of joint-stock companies. The Dutch East India Company, or Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), was established in 1602 by an amalgamation […] 

It is hard to think of two businesses as different as TikTok and US Steel. The later is more than a century old (which I am given to believe counts as a longtime in the United States), employs more than 20,000 workers and is just about as ‘old economy’ as on one can imagine, producing […] 

A few weeks ago, my eldest child made the all too easy mistake of casually asking me “why doesn’t Britain use the Euro?” It would, as she noted, make holidaying in Spain much more straightforward. Twenty minutes later, and after an impromptu tutorial on monetary policy and the business cycle, she presumably regretted asking. Prompted […] 

Around 18 months ago, during the short-lived Prime Ministerial term of Liz Truss, your columnist had lunch with an American asset manager who happened to be in London. His visit was at least well timed for a period of extreme turbulence in the market for British government debt. Wearily he told me that he only […] 

The past year has been good for those who happen to hold US equities. The S&P 500 is up by almost 30% over the last twelve months and by around 7.5% so far this year. Which given that March only just started is a very strong return indeed. Investment commentary though, and the opinion pages […]