Productivity and affordability: Canada’s top challenges in 2025

In this episode, Lori Calvasina, Head of US Equity Strategy, is joined by two of her macro partners at RBC Capital Markets, Head of US Rates Strategy, Blake Gwinn, and Equity Derivative Strategist Amy Wu Silverman. With 2024 winding down, all of their outlook reports out, and too many December investor meetings behind them to even count, these three thought leaders at RBC Capital Markets came together to discuss their thoughts on the equity market, the bond market, and volatility in the year ahead. The conversation took place on December 19th, 2024.

Recession looks avoidable for Europe in 2025, but significant growth is still elusive. This episode of RBC Capital Market’s Strategic Alternatives considers the prospects, weighing political volatility in the region, central banks’ rate-cutting cycles, and potential U.S. interventions. What does all this mean for investors? Janet Wilkinson, Head of Fixed Income & Currencies Flow Sales, EMEA, is joined by Peter Schaffrik, Chief European Macro Strategist, and Cathal Kennedy, Senior U.K. Economist.

Australia’s hopes for some strengthening in growth in 2025 rest on a pickup in household spending to support the public demand currently underpinning the economy. Meanwhile, housing, immigration, and inflation pose interlinked challenges – with geopolitical risks on the horizon. Chief Economist, Su-Lin Ong, and Macro Rates Strategist, Rob Thompson, join Rod Ireland, Head of Global Markets, APAC, to assess the prospects in this episode of RBC Capital Markets’ Strategic Alternatives podcast.

2025 will see the U.S. economy diverge even further from other developed nations, in ways that begin to look structural rather than cyclical. That’s one of the predictions from RBC Capital Markets’ Chief Economist Frances Donald and U.S. Economist Mike Reid in their outlook for the next year. They join Vito Sperduto, Head of RBC Capital Markets U.S. to weigh the economic impact of the incoming administration’s policies – and the tough line the Fed will need to tread in 2025.

Canada enters 2025 facing huge uncertainties at home and abroad. But one thing seems clear: it is set on a very different path to its powerful neighbor in terms of both economic growth potential and monetary policy. In this episode of Strategic Alternatives, Lindsay Patrick, Head of Strategy, Marketing and Sustainability is joined by RBC Chief Economist Frances Donald to analyze why Canada and the U.S. are diverging so starkly and to assess Canada’s efforts to address its housing and affordability crises in the year ahead.

Lighter regulation under the next U.S. administration may make dealmaking simpler, at least in some sectors, but how will M&A be affected by Trump’s other plans? In this episode of Strategic Alternatives, Ben Mandell, Global Head of M&A, is joined by RBC Capital Markets’ M&A experts from across the globe to analyze how the change of regime and other factors will influence transactions in 2025.

At RBC’s 2024 Global Technology, Internet, Media, and Telecom (TIMT) Conference, equity capital markets bankers sat down to discuss the key trends in the tech sector, and how this will catalyze activity in the IPO and broader equity market, M&A, private markets and more moving into 2025.

In 2025, Fixed income returns across the world will depend partly on the continuing resilience of the U.S. economy, and how far the Federal Reserve takes its current easing cycle. But macroeconomic variations among different markets will also be a big influence. In this episode of the Strategic Alternatives podcast, RBC Capital Market specialists from major global markets sift the key factors to offer informed predictions.

At RBC's Global Industrials conference in Las Vegas, Vito Sperduto, Head of RBC Capital Markets U.S., and Lori Calvasina, Head of U.S. equity strategy talk about the key themes shaping equity markets right now, and how investors are thinking about and factoring in the potential impact of the US election.

Last autumn the Industrials M&A landscape was subdued at best. This year the mood at RBC’s Global Industrials Conference was very different, with a revived corporate scene and private equity increasingly active. Joshua Rosenbaum, Global Head of Industrials, joins the Strategic Alternatives podcast to discuss the most promising sectors, and whether the shadow of the global financial crisis is finally clearing.