Notes on the Week Ahead

When I first arrived in America, America seemed to be all about cars.

It was the early 1980s, and I had come over from Ireland to do a Ph.D. in economics at Michigan State University. The campus was strewn with the hand-me-down vehicles of the student body – great gas-guzzling behemoths rendered hopeless...

I was watching a football game over the weekend and I saw a giant lineman go down. He was in obvious pain and hobbled, assisted and very slowly, to the sideline. The TV commentators, to my amazement, said he didn’t look too bad and he was probably healthy enough to return to the field in a snap or two. But to look at this man, battered, bruised and probably many times concussed, his frame swollen by a cardiac nightmare of a diet, h...

I was rewatching Apollo 13 over the weekend - a fabulous movie, by the way, if you’ve never seen it - about how, in 1970, three astronauts returned safely to Earth following an explosion on their spacecraft, two days into a journey to the Moon.

Among the many problems faced by the crew and mission contro...

This quarter, we dropped the oil page from our Guide to the Markets.

There are always exactly 65 pages in the Guide, so when we want to add a page, we have to get rid of one. The process is, unfortunately, democratic, so when my younger colleagues wanted to add pages illustrating U.S. equity market concentration (page 10), the AI capital spending boom (page 22) and dollar weakness and international equity outperformance (page 43), ...

As I get older, my memory gets a little foggier. That being said, I believe it was at lunch at a restaurant near our office on Friday, March 6th, 2009, when I and the then three other members of the Market Insights Team, Andy, Marlene and Jerry, made a bet. That day, although we didn’t know it at the time, the stock market hit its financial crisis low and the bet concerned how long it would take for the market to recover its losses...

American summers, much more so than in the rest of the world, are defined by two bookends: Memorial Day and Labor Day. As a result, the first week in September is always a time to review and plan. This is particularly important for investors this year since, facing a barrage of unsettling political and economic news, on one side, and very solid investment returns, on the other, it’s tempting to ignore fundamentals altogether and le...

On August 7th, with little fanfare, the IRS announced that, as part of its phased implementation of the OBBBA, it would not be adjusting W2 or 1099 forms for the current calendar year but would provide guidance and new forms, in due course, for calendar 2026.

This seemingly innocuous statement confirms that we will see in an even larger crop of personal income tax refunds early in 2026 than was anticipated when the OBBBA was passed...

One of the great challenges of modern life is avoiding distractions.

In our daily lives, we are flooded by breaking news, music on planes, ads in taxis and little numbers, gazing up at us from phone apps, saying that somebody has something to say. In the investment world, we are bombarded by scrolling tickers, new products and jargon, impenetrable financial reports and the analysis of every twist and turn of government policy.

The ...

The inflation temperature is about to rise. It should be a low-grade fever, triggered by tariff impacts but mitigated by low energy prices, declines in shelter inflation and global economic sluggishness. But it should also linger well above the Fed’s 2% target, as the initial impact of tariffs is supplemented by the effects of a weakening dollar, a lack of labor supply and fiscal stimulus in the first half of 2026. It could, of cou...

This is a particularly challenging time to try to develop and present a balanced view of the economic outlook and its implications for investors. This is partly due to dramatic changes in trade, immigration and fiscal policies that are just beginning to impact the economy, partly due to distortion and mismeasurement in many key economic series and partly due to sharp attacks on the Federal Reserve and, more recently, even governmen...

For investors, the week ahead will be dominated by the Fed decisions.

Possibly, some AI chatbot will spot the obvious grammatical error in that last sentence and change it from “the Fed decisions” to “the Fed’s decision”. However, there are really two decisions to consider: First, what will the Fed decide ...

As you make your way through Terminal 5 in Heathrow airport, there are plenty of opportunities to buy a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On”. The wearer of such a garment, upon their return to the United States, is presumably advertising the idea that a visit to the blessed plot has bestowed upon them the ability to weather all manner of shocks with equanimity.

When it comes to financial markets, however, the British...

Despite very significant shifts in U.S. economic policy and major geopolitical events, investors can look back at the first half of 2025 with some satisfaction. Through July 3rd, the S&P500 provided a total return of 7.5% for the year, despite being on the brink of a bear market just three months ago. Fixed income has also done well, with 10-year Treasury yields falling by 23 basis points, generating a 4.2% return year-to-date ...