Markets, explained without the hype. Independent coverage of crypto, currencies and global markets.
Headlines quote CPI. The Federal Reserve's 2% target is set against PCE, a different index that usually reads lower. The gap is not a rounding difference and the reasons for it are instructive.
Independence is not a constitutional guarantee. It is a set of arrangements that can be adjusted, and the arguments for adjusting them are usually reasonable-sounding.
A market-cap weighted index gives the largest companies the largest share. When a few grow far faster than the rest, a diversified-looking fund quietly becomes a concentrated bet.
After a series of exchange failures, proof of reserves became standard practice. It answers one question well and leaves a larger one almost entirely open.
A 1% annual fee sounds trivial next to the returns being discussed. Over a working life it is not trivial, and the reason is that fees compound against you exactly as returns compound for you.
A bilateral rate tells you what a currency did against one other. REER tells you what it did against everything a country trades with, adjusted for inflation - which is what competitiveness actually depends on.
A buyback returns cash to shareholders by shrinking the company rather than paying them directly. Whether that creates value depends entirely on one thing, and it is not the size of the programme.
A strategy tested on the companies that exist today has been tested on a list assembled with hindsight. The ones that failed are missing, and their absence flatters every result.
Mining converts electricity into security. The revenue halves on a schedule, the difficulty adjusts to whatever hardware is running, and neither mechanism guarantees miners a profit.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins and tokenized assets.
Major pairs, central banks and the macro that moves them.
Commodities, rates, inflation and the wider economy.
Risk, psychology and how markets really work.
Financial coverage aimed at people who want to understand the mechanism, not receive a signal. Every explainer sets out how something actually works before it discusses what it might mean.
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