"No one knows how this ends"

Two weeks into the war between the US-Israeli forces and Iran, commodities and financial markets have whipsawed on every indication of a quick end to hostilities or signs of an extended energy-supply shock.To help clarify the outlook, Mohammad Darwazah, the head of Energy 360 at Energy Aspects, joined Medley Advisors' weekly meeting. In this edited version of the meeting, quizzing him and giving their own views (in order) are Pepijn Bergsen, Fernando Posadas, Andrew Besuyen and Dan Schwartz."It all comes down to duration of the conflict and no one knows how this ends," said Darwazah. "Trump can declare victory unilaterally, but the Iranians are not going to live in a world where this could happen every six months so it's clear they're raising the costs sufficiently to try to deter the US and Israel from doing this again". 

Another week, another US tariff regime.  As expected, the US Supreme Court has ruled that the emergency tariff regime operated by President Donald Trump since April 2025 is unconstitutional. Just as expected was Trump's immediate swapping of his emergency powers for alternative executive authorisation. With this, introduced a global 10% tariff and promised to raise this soon to 15%. Where does this leave the tariff-relief deals he struck during 2025? At their weekly meeting, Medley Advisors' analysts discussed this latest twist, what it means for Europe and the USMCA and how markets were more interested in Matt Schumer's X-hosted essay on AI. In this edited version of the meeting, Michael Redmond was the host and was followed (in order) by Brian Jackson, Pepijn Bergsen, Tim Jones, Fernando Posadas and Dan Schwartz. "No plan survives contact with the enemy," said Brian Jackson. "I think this is very descriptive of a lot of the best-laid plans of, let's say, the technocrats or bureaucrats in the Trump administration because Trump sometimes wants to be a lot more flexible than what a lawyer tells him".

With his job-approval rate hitting new lows, US president Donald Trump is pulling out every stop to avoid defeat in Congressional midterm elections in November.After six weeks that included military intervention in Venezuela and the threat of tariff hikes on European countries unless they agreed to the forced sale of Greenland, investors are asking what could happen next. Will Trump order an attack on Iran, walk away from the UMCA, step up pressure on the Federal Reserve, or act on his national security strategy for regime change in Europe?To discuss what lies ahead between now and the midterms, Medley Advisors brought together Michael Redmond ("Fed watcher"), Dan Schwartz (EA Head of Macro Markets) and Daniel Sternoff (EA Head of Executive Briefing)."Do we see more Greenlands and Venezuelas and so forth?" says Sternoff. "It's important to point out that Trump's main focus is of course, domestic, not international, even though he's hyperactive internationally ... One of the biggest motivations of American unhappiness is affordability and cost of living concerns and so Trump is now starting to throw populist spaghetti against the wall in a wave of initiatives ... It says a lot about where his head is". The speakers, in order, are Tim Jones, Daniel Sternoff, Michael Redmond, Fernando Posadas, and Dan Schwartz.

The morning after US president Donald Trump reversed gears in Davos and (temporarily) dropped the US claim to Greenland, Medley Advisors held their weekly meeting to discuss policymaking and markets."For me, the surprise was just how little markets actually reacted to this," said Dan Schwarz, the head of macro markets. "The TACO thesis is firmly embedded in markets at this point". The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) had been coasting at 15 before Trump combined a Greenland acquisition with punitive tariffs on eight European countries and jumped to 20 - "a level you typically see in stressed markets, not even distressed markets," he added. "In terms of intensity and on a scale of one to five, if the tariff incident was a five ... this is like a two, maybe a three".The speakers, in order, are Tim Jones, Brian Jackson, Pepijn Bergsen, Dan Schwartz and Mario Lima.

After an eventful 2025, what does 2026 hold for geopolitics, economics, and monetary policy? Medley Advisors' analysts gathered in the week before Christmas to give their best shot. Outlining their 2026 calls are:Richard Bronze, co-founder of Energy Aspects and head of geopolitics.Ignacio Labaqui, Medley's Latin American politics analyst.Michael Redmond, Medley's "Fed-watcher" and US analyst.Brian Jackson, Medley's China and US trade analyst.Kenichi Nagura, Medley's "BOJ-watcher" and Japan analyst.Debalina Hazra, Medley's India analyst.Andrew Besuyen, Medley's "RBA/RBNZ watcher".Mario Lima, Medley's Brazil analyst.Tim Jones, host, "ECB watcher" and Europe analyst.    

Heavy defeats for US Republicans in New Jersey and Virginia and a shrunken winning margin in Tennessee have triggered a spate of Congressional retirements and talk that Donald Trump's second presidency is already a "lame duck". This has prompted market speculation that he could take another populist turn - adding pressure on the Federal Reserve and posting out stimulus cheques. Michael Redmond, Medley Advisors' US and Fed analyst is sceptical. "It just makes it really difficult to control the House when there's this level of unhappiness and it's such a thin margin already and you have some people who are looking for the exits," he says in this podcast. "So that probably means that Trump can't get through some of these ideas that he's talking about ... The Fed won't really need to be delivering more easing next year but, with all these elements politically and economically, the risks are definitely skewed to the downside for interest rates next year". In this edited version of their weekly meeting, Medley analysts discuss this, lessons from Trump whisperers from Brazil, China's coming economic planning conference and a second wave of Chinese disinflation for Europe. In order the speakers are Michael Redmond, Tim Jones, Pepijn Bergsen, Mario Lima, Brian Jackson and Fernando Posadas.   

Is this week's correction to the stock market's seven-month streak a pause or a first puncture of the "AI bubble"?Medley Advisors analysts held their weekly meeting just after the first jitters and rally following Nvidia's earnings report but before the aggresive intra-day sell-off on 20 November. They discussed the meaning and causes of the correction, the impact of AI on Federal Reserve policy thinking, and the latest developments in US trade policy.In this abridged and edited summary of the meeting, the speakers are (in order) Dan Schwartz, Michael Redmond, Pepijn Bergsen, Fernando Posadas and Brian Jackson. "I don't think the bubble talk is going away," said Dan Schwartz. "The nature of the media has changed so much that you're going to hear a lot more of these voices ... If you go back to the Nasdaq bubble, think about who were the biggest voices on tech - it was probably Maria Bartiromo and Ron Insana on CNBC and they were cheerleaders for the sector. Today, you have a million trolls on the internet saying 'I told you so' or being champions of the technology". 

Democratic landslides in US state and city elections this week raised the possibility that Republicans could lose control of Congress entirely in the 2026 midterms. At the same time, the Supreme Court began public deliberations on legal challenges to the use of IEEPA emergency powers to impose tariffs without Congressional authority.Now on the backfoot after successful Democratic campaigns against high prices, will President Donald Trump be forced to leave the Federal Reserve alone to apply mildly restrictive policy? Could tariffs be under threat? Will foreign governments cowed by nine months of US unilateralism, start to smell weakness?These questions were raised at the Medley Advisors weekly analysts' meeting. In this edited podcast of the meeting, the speakers, in order, are Fernando Posadas, Michael Redmond, Mario Lima, Brian Jackson, Tim Jones, Dan Schwartz and Pepijn Bergsen."This administration bases a huge amount of their foreign policy on the ability to put tariffs in place," says Brian Jackson. "They have plenty of other powersready to go if they lose IEEPA specifically".

With an imminent election in Argentina and a string of them looming in Chile, Colombia and Brazil, Medley Advisors’ Latin America analysts decided the time was ripe for a client roadshow in New York last week. Their arrival also coincided with an escalation of the US’s military build-up in the Caribbean—culminating in deployment of the Gerald Ford aircraft-carrier group—as part of a campaign to change the regime in Venezuela.   “This is like Anton Chekhov said: when you hang a gun on the wall in the first act of a play, it's because, at some point, it's going to be used,” said Ignacio Labaqui, Medley’s regional political analyst. The build-up is “aimed at trying to provoke a defection that leads to either an internal coup or [President Nicolás] Maduro and other top officials of the administration leaving Venezuela”. Aside from Venezuela, in this podcast, Labaqui and his colleagues Fernando Posadas and Mario Lima outline client priorities in Latin America and discuss opportunities in regional rates markets, the implications of Argentina’s midterm-election results, and Brazil’s shifting political sands and monetary-policy outlook. 

As budgetary standoffs bring down a fifth French cabinet before it even takes office and shut down the US federal government, Medley Advisors analysts met to ask why markets seem so sanguine."Markets say they care about fiscal sustainability, but I'm not sure they do," says markets specialist Dan Schwartz. "Alternatively, they're saying that, despite the slippage, it's not a problem ... If that were to change, it would probably change all at once and then you'll start to see a risk premium priced into assets around the world".Discussing France, the US and market sentiment, the speakers (in order) are Tim Jones, Pepijn Bergsen, Andrew Besuyen, Dan Schwartz and Michael Redmond.