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Gold, oil, bonds, inflation and the economic releases that set the tone across every asset class — background and context for readers following global markets.
34 articles
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.
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.
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.
Electrification, grid rebuilds and data centres all need copper. New mines take fifteen to twenty years. That gap between demand and supply response is the whole story.
Oil frequently rises on conflict before a single barrel is lost. What is being priced is the probability of disruption - and that premium behaves very differently from a genuine supply shock.
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.
Corporate lending moved out of banks and into funds over roughly fifteen years. The Financial Stability Board's 2026 report sets out why supervisors are now paying close attention to where it went.
Quantitative easing created money to buy bonds. Quantitative tightening reverses it - usually not by selling, but by letting bonds mature and declining to reinvest. The difference matters.
Long-dated government yields are not simply a forecast of future policy rates. There is a second component, it moves independently, and it explains most of what confuses people about the bond market.
The monthly employment report contains two separate surveys of two different things. Knowing which number came from which survey explains most of the confusion around it.
Inflation and weak growth normally arrive at different times, and the same policy tool fixes both. When they arrive together, that tool stops working - and the choice becomes which problem to make worse.
An inverted yield curve has preceded most modern US recessions, which is why it gets attention. The lag is long, the false signals are real, and the mechanism is more interesting than the correlation.
Four times a year the Federal Reserve publishes a chart of where each policymaker expects rates to go. It is the most misread document in markets. Here is what it is, and what it cannot do.
Official gold buying has run well above its historical average for several years running. The reasons have less to do with the gold price than with what central banks want their reserves to be able to do.
Profit is an opinion shaped by accounting judgement. Cash is a fact. The cash flow statement is where you find out whether reported earnings are actually arriving.
An income statement shows what a company earned and spent over a period. The interesting part is not the final number but the margins between each line, and which costs a company chooses to call unusual.
Media coverage speaks as though one person sets American interest rates. The Chair holds one vote of twelve. The real power is agenda-setting and communication, which is subtler and in some ways larger.
Three agencies grade the creditworthiness of governments and companies, and those grades determine borrowing costs worldwide. The scale is simple; the incentives behind it are not.
A balance sheet is a photograph of what a company owns and owes on one day. Four numbers tell you most of what you need, and one relationship explains the rest.
Price divided by earnings is the most quoted valuation number in markets. It is also easy to misread, because both halves of the fraction can be manipulated or distorted.
Hedge funds are private pooled investments open to a restricted set of investors, with wide freedom in what they trade and a fee structure that has drawn persistent criticism.
An IPO turns a private company into a listed one. Understanding who sells, who buys first, and why the opening price is rarely the offer price explains most of what goes wrong for retail buyers.
Dividend yield is a fraction, and the denominator is the share price. A yield that rises because the price collapsed is a symptom, not an opportunity.
A bond is a loan you can trade. Understanding coupons, maturity, credit risk and duration explains most of what happens in the largest market in the world.
The two-quarters rule is a media convention, not a definition. Here is how recessions are actually dated, which indicators matter, and why the announcement always arrives late.
Silver is a precious metal and an industrial input at the same time. That dual identity explains why it is more volatile than gold and harder to forecast than either role alone suggests.
An ETF trades like a share and holds a basket like a fund. The mechanism keeping its price honest is the part almost nobody explains, and it is the part that occasionally fails.
QE is described as printing money, which is wrong in a way that matters. Here is the actual mechanism, what it demonstrably changes, and what remains genuinely disputed.
The 10-year government bond yield sits underneath the price of shares, gold, currencies and mortgages. Here is what a yield is, why it moves inversely to price, and what it signals.
A CPI release can move currencies, bonds and equities within seconds. Here is what the number contains, why core matters more than headline, and why the surprise beats the level.
Oil prices are set by a small number of forces that are unusually easy to name: OPEC policy, US shale economics, demand growth, inventories and geopolitical risk. Here is how each works.
An economic calendar lists what is coming and what is expected. The number that matters is the gap between forecast and actual — and the releases worth your attention are fewer than you think.
A 20% move defines the label, but the definition is arbitrary and backward-looking. What actually matters is what drives each phase, how long they last, and how badly people behave in them.
Gold pays no income, so its price is set by the cost of holding it rather than by cash flows. That single fact explains most of its behaviour — including when the inflation hedge story fails.
