China · Lead feature
China's Silent RecessionThe numbers Beijing doesn't want you to see — and what they mean for the rest of the cycle.
By George MagnusA+0.171
Senior Contributor · China · Today, 09:12 GMT
8,421 873 live markets
The numbers Beijing doesn't want you to see — and what they mean for the rest of the cycle.
Powell isn't fighting 2021 inflation any more. He's pre-empting a labor-market collapse — and the dot plot hasn't caught up.
The interesting question is not the headline cut, but whether Riyadh holds the line through March against US shale at $70.
The dissent matters more than the policy. The yen curve has not yet priced what a divided BoJ implies for terminal rate.
ECB rhetoric on inflation persistence has changed materially in two meetings. The bund-treasury spread is the cleanest expression.
The downward revision pattern in non-farm payrolls is now persistent, large, and one-directional. The Fed will move before summer.
Markets appear to underprice downside tail risk—especially in rates—because policy uncertainty centers on whether labor-market deterioration or stickier-than-expected inflation will dominate; base case is modest easing, steeper 2s10s, improving equity breadth, and growth normalizing into 2026.
The author is building an AI-driven, agentic research and macro trading system to map the prevailing macro regime and identify a few large asymmetric trades; they argue AI converging with higher-quality data and expanding hardware infrastructure will precipitate a major market reckoning while markets underprice geopolitical risk.
Rapid AI-driven productivity, concentrated foreign capital into AI themes, and unusually cheap credit are cross-linking the credit cycle, labor market, and trade in ways that could undermine the marginal buyers supporting high US equity valuations—sowing structural risk for a future bear market even if a near-term crash is not imminent.
A macro-investing podcast that distills 30 years of market experience into practical, candid takes—learning from both wins and losses—through themed episodes such as 'Ivan's Double' and others addressing gold miners, SaaS, Japanese banks and regional market views.
The Bank of Japan's April 2026 outlook assesses recent economic activity and price developments, presents baseline projections for growth and consumer prices, identifies the main demand/supply and external drivers of inflation, and discusses monetary policy stance and key upside/downside risks.
US real and nominal GDP have been stronger than expected—driven by consumer demand, wage gains, and tech-led business investment—and are likely to cool modestly but remain above recent averages in 2025; inflation is expected to remain sticky around 2.5–3%, the Fed is likely to deliver more rate cuts than markets currently price, and tariffs show statistically significant effects on PCE and the effective exchange rate.
Rapid AI-driven technological change creates deep uncertainty about jobs, growth, and distribution; Democrats should adopt robust, technology-agnostic policies centered on abundance (cheap basics), government ownership stakes in corporate returns, and incentives to preserve and grow human work.
A collection of linked reports highlighting structural breakdowns: market manipulation and regulatory capture in exchanges and antitrust enforcement; geopolitically driven oil supply risk compounded by insurers' unwillingness to underwrite tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz; mounting uninsurability of regions; environmental and infrastructure impacts from AI data center buildout; cybersecurity breaches and flawed military targeting data that produced civilian harm.
Frames the recent market pullback as minor and presents a bullish outlook, arguing the market is likely to resume an upward leg.
Investors can be driven by moral identity rather than traditional fear-based risk aversion, creating situations where probability-based pricing and identity-based preferences collide; the piece examines how that tension alters allocation decisions, pricing, and market behavior.
Drop a tracked-claim market into any Substack, Beehiiv, or WordPress post. Self-styled, two lines of HTML.
Cross-product identity bridging from Prophecy Social. Coming next.