The Iran conflict is raising the prospect of stagflation and is "a pretty bad mix for markets," according to Jim McCormick, Chief Global Macro Strategist at Citi. He speaks on the sidelines of the Citi Hong Kong Macro Conference. (Source: Bloomberg)
The Iran conflict is raising the prospect of stagflation and is "a pretty bad mix for markets," according to Jim McCormick, Chief Global Macro Strategist at Citi. He speaks on the sidelines of the Citi Hong Kong Macro Conference. (Source: Bloomberg)
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek suffered a prolonged outage overnight that extended into early Monday morning, disrupting service for hundreds of millions of users, according to a company notice and user feedback. The Hangzhou-based AI lab’s namesake chatbot website and app were offline from Sunday evening, with the company continuing to investigate while issuing fixes from betwe...
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek suffered a prolonged outage overnight that extended into early Monday morning, disrupting service for hundreds of millions of users, according to a company notice and user feedback. The Hangzhou-based AI lab’s namesake chatbot website and app were offline from Sunday evening, with the company continuing to investigate while issuing fixes from between 1am and 9am on Monday, according to service maintenance records the company published online. The...
The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said a peacekeeper was killed when a projectile exploded at one of its positions near the southern Lebanese village of Adchit al-Qusayr on Sunday. Another peacekeeper was critically injured, it said in a statement early on Monday. Indonesia’s foreign ministry said on Monday the deceased peacekeeper was one of its citizens and that three others we...
The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said a peacekeeper was killed when a projectile exploded at one of its positions near the southern Lebanese village of Adchit al-Qusayr on Sunday. Another peacekeeper was critically injured, it said in a statement early on Monday. Indonesia’s foreign ministry said on Monday the deceased peacekeeper was one of its citizens and that three others were injured by indirect artillery fire in the vicinity of the Indonesian UNIFIL contingent’s position...
peshkov/iStock via Getty Images Key Takeaways • Markets: The S&P 500 Index extended its advance in the fourth quarter, rising 2.7% and finishing the year up 17.9%. Following the “Liberation Day” selloff, the index posted gains in each subsequent month (eight consecutive monthly advances), climbing 37% from the April 8 market low. While market participation broadened in the fourth quarter, 2025 was...
peshkov/iStock via Getty Images Key Takeaways • Markets: The S&P 500 Index extended its advance in the fourth quarter, rising 2.7% and finishing the year up 17.9%. Following the “Liberation Day” selloff, the index posted gains in each subsequent month (eight consecutive monthly advances), climbing 37% from the April 8 market low. While market participation broadened in the fourth quarter, 2025 was again dominated by mega cap technology and the AI ecosystem. • Contributors: Stock selection in health care, consumer staples and consumer discretionary proved beneficial. • Detractors: Stock selection in the IT, communication services, industrials and materials sectors detracted from relative results. • Outlook: We remain focused on through-the-cycle outperformance via downside protection, and we increasingly believe risks may be starting to outweigh the prospective rewards. Performance Review • The ClearBridge Appreciation Portfolios underperformed the benchmark S&P 500 Index in the fourth quarter. On an absolute basis, the Portfolios had positive contributions from six of 11 sectors. The health care and communication services sectors were the main positive contributors, while industrials, materials and IT were the main detractors. • On an individual stock basis, the biggest relative contributors during the quarter were Eli Lilly, Alphabet ( GOOGL ), Thermo Fisher Scientific ( TMO ), ASML ( ASML ) and an underweight to Oracle ( ORCL ). The biggest detractors were Netflix ( NFLX ), Eaton ( ETN ), Micron Technology ( MU ) (not owned), Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Automatic Data Processing ( ADP ). • Eli Lilly shares were up as the U.S. government struck a deal with Lilly to offer GLP-1s to Medicare and Medicaid patients, opening up millions of additional prescriptions, while readouts on the company’s oral GLP-1 treatment indicated a broader market than we had expected. • Alphabet’s success with its Google Gemini chatbot and TPU chips for AI workloads boosted its shares more than...
Global Demand Destruction: Subsidies, Empty Gas Stations, Rationing, Flight Cancelations, Export Limits, Price Controls In the past two weeks we have discussed demand destruction as a result of soaring oil prices ( here and here ), and we are increasingly seeing anecdotal evidence of just that (here is a table from Goldman we showed previously, laying out where demand destruction is most acute). W...
Global Demand Destruction: Subsidies, Empty Gas Stations, Rationing, Flight Cancelations, Export Limits, Price Controls In the past two weeks we have discussed demand destruction as a result of soaring oil prices ( here and here ), and we are increasingly seeing anecdotal evidence of just that (here is a table from Goldman we showed previously, laying out where demand destruction is most acute). We start, as always, with Asia which has emerged as ground zero of the global energy crisis - as a reminder last week we first presented a map by JPMorgan's resident commodity expert who how the shockwave from the Iran war spreads across the world, hitting Asia first, then Africa and Europe, before settling on the US, but mostly California. Source According to UBS, a shortage of jet fuel in Asia and very high prices for what is available are now leading to greater flight cancellations. European jet fuel trades around $1713/tonne, up 114% since the war began. Singapore fuel is up around 140%. Both Vietnam Airlines and Air New Zealand have had to cancel flights due to limited fuel supply. Let's go down the list. 1. Panic buying prompts PM to reassure Australians over fuel supply ( bbc ) Australia will halve its fuel excise for three months from Wednesday after prices soared to a record last week as the impact of the Iran war spreads. Meanwhile, the average price of a liter of diesel jumped above A$2.82 last week, while petrol was almost A$2.40, both the highest in at least 20 years. The average price in rural regions like the Northern Territory was even higher, a blow to farmers and long-distance transport firms. The temporary cut would reduce the price of petrol and diesel by about 26 Australian cents ($0.18) per liter, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a press conference Monday in Canberra. “The longer this war goes on, the worse the impacts will be,” he said. The government will also reduce the heavy road user charge for the next three months, and delay the next plann...