Tariffs: Rules of Thump . This is a follow up to my e-mail to to you on Trump's Tariffs last Friday (1/31) & the 2 reports Astern (1/08) & The McKInley Factor (1/26). Cantext; The Mexico, Canada, China tariffs ("Tariffs 1/31") declared by President Trump so far ... Read More

Trump Delivers. President Trump has announced the imposition of 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada and 10% on imports from China. The tariffs will be effective immediately (Sat, Feb 1). At time of writing It is not clear whether there are exemptions (e.g. fo... Read More

Central Banks There were a few interesting things from the ECB and FOMC meetings: ECB Mme LaGarde is convinced that the Eurozone recovery is happening and will accelerate as inflation falls and real incomes rise. Real income will rise because wage increases will ... Read More

DeepSeek Disruption: Tech, Economic, Geopolitical DeepSeek disruption to AI Chatbots/LLMs, like ChatGPT4 and to suppliers of AI semiconductors like Nvidia, is significant. It can also change forecasts for ever rising electricity demand from data centres. But by corol... Read More

President Trump inauguration speech. US$ may weaken for a while due to lack of immediate imposition of tariffs (in contrast with other policies like immigration) and statement that his administration would “ begin the overhaul” of trade with foreign countries. I don’t ex... Read More

FOMC - the future confusion. Some FOMC members included estimates of President Trump's mooted Tariff and Immigration policies in their "dot" estimates. One did not. And some didn't say. Some argued that such policies could damage the inflation outlook. Some obviously did no... Read More

Finland-Estonia – suspected undersea electricity sabotage. The undersea electricity cable (EstLink 2) linking both countries failed at 2400hrs on 12/25/2024. EstLink 2 is 170km long with 145km being undersea. It is alleged that the cable was cut under the ... Read More

The relevance of China purges and Korean Constitutional crisis to investors: China - Purge. This brings to 20 the senior officer purged in the last 18 months. The purpose is bring the PLA more under Xi’s direct control. It helps tranform the PLA into a more honed ... Read More

Quantum Strategy never closes. So service is normal during the end of year vacation. I say thank you for your support and wish you all health, happiness and success, in whatever way you define it, next year and for many years to come. Read More

US Fed. Cut as expected = 25bp. One dissent - Beth M. Hammack. Positive for US$ Vs EURO & Yen. Forecast for policy rates in 2025 up quite sharply from Sept forecast to 3.9% from 3.4% . That would indicate fewer cuts . The FOMC expects policy rate cuts to continue into... Read More