GeoMacro

The announced US-China deal has taken everyone – even us, the authors of the implicitly bullish Seven Steps of Maximum Pressure – by surprise. President Trump has signaled a pause in the fight against China. Yes, the situation can reverse, but when your Secretary Treasury says things like “neither side wants to decouple,” the world should listen.

Special Report

Short-term pain from Trump-related concessions, fiscal tightening amid a US and Mexican slowdown, and rising labor slack will weigh further on Mexican assets. But long-run, policy direction will capitalize on the nearshoring trend and resume the trend of Mexican asset outperformance relative to other emerging markets.

Special Report

Erdogan's rule continues to decline. Social unrest will persist, governance will erode, and the macro backdrop will deteriorate further. We recommend underweighting Turkish assets.

In our Beta report, we do something different. We focus on what factors create a macro context that is conducive to FDI inflows. Market size, trade openness, and infrastructure quality drive appeal, but secondary factors like governance and overall business climate play a meaningful role as well. As FDI reshuffles around geopolitics and new supply chains, competition will heat up among both destinations and investors.

Negotiations on trade, Iran, and Ukraine will prove critical this month. Markets will remain volatile because positive data surprises enable the White House to press its hawkish tariff hikes, while negative surprises force the White House to backpedal.

In our Alpha report, we explain how to trade the trade war and then conduct a scenario analysis for global asset allocation. The short version is that a policy induced recession has to be traded based on policy, not hard macroeconomic data.

Special Report

If Trump’s tariffs are ‘America's Brexit’, then UK gilts will recoup ten years of underperformance versus US T-bonds. Meanwhile, as the AI bubble fully deflates, Europe’s stock market valuation versus the US will rerate by about 25 percent. The big ‘currency’ winner of the structural exodus from the US dollar will be bitcoin. Plus: a trade for the next four weeks is to go tactically long USD/CHF.

Special Report

The US and Canada will resolve their trade dispute quickly, leading to a North American deal and better prospects for future relations, as well as for other US trade deals around the world. But even as tariff threats decline, the US economy will slow, weighing on its neighbors. Canada will fare better than Mexico.

The US will continue to lead global trade, but the past winners from China-US tensions face decline. Reglobalization is underway. India Port Infrastructure will be a long-term winner.

Special Report

Cybersecurity is a strategic investment theme, which looks particularly interesting in light of the trade war and heightened geopolitical tensions. It is less exposed to tariffs than other industries and, if anything, benefits from geopolitical tensions as customers seek protection from international cyberattacks and cybercrime. The industry’s fundamentals are improving, while valuations are moderating. A recent pullback presents an attractive entry point into the theme.