This Week’s Menu: January 10-16, 2026 January 10, 2026 Central Banks: Interest rate policies will be reviewed in Poland, Serbia and South Korea. The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book of recent regional economic conditions since the last FOMC meeting arrives on Wednesday, and a slew of Fed officials will be making public comments during the upcoming…
Weak U.S. Job Growth Continued But Unemployment Rate Unexpectedly Slipped Back to 4.4% January 9, 2026 In a week full of data releases, the most eagerly awaited report from the get-go had been today’s U.S. December employment situation report from the Labor Department, which presented mixed results relative to market expectations but an overall soft…
Investors Being Cautious Amid Elevated Economic and Geopolitical Uncertainty January 8, 2026 Yesterday’s declines in equity prices have been extended. U.S. stock futures are around 0.5% lower prior to the release of U.S. statistics today of jobless insurance claims, the trade balance, consumer price expectations and labor productivity, as well as tomorrow’s most eagerly awaited…
Watching the Situation in Venezuela and Awaiting Some Key Data Due Soon January 7, 2026 The Trump Administration continues to unfold sweeping changes in policies toward other countries in the Western Hemisphere. Precise details remain sketchy, but the roll-out of assertions has been very bold, with implications stretching well beyond Latin America and Canada to…
Tuesday Attention on Economic Matters, Not Geopolitics January 6, 2026 Investors seem to be paying greater attention to economic news such as inflation data, AI news, and comments from central bankers than to the U.S.-powered upheaval in geopolitical norms that has greeted the new year. Yesterday’s U.S. stock market rally carried into Asian trading where…
A Third Israeli Interest Rate Cut January 5, 2026 At the Bank of Israel’s first scheduled review of interest rate policy this year. In light of a 25-basis point cut at the prior review in late November, analysts were not anticipating an interest rate change, but it was instead cut by a further 25 basis…
Financial Markets React to Madura’s Capture January 5, 2026 (158) President Trump’s efforts to replace Madura was pitched originally as a solution to the U.S. Fentanyl problem, but the deeper motive of this still unfolding narrative is a gambit to drive up Venezuelan oil production, cheapen the price of fossil fuel energy and drive faster…
Yearend Seasonality of EUR/USD January 1, 2026 The most widely followed bilateral relationship in the first quarter century of the era of flexible dollar exchange rates was that against Germany’s Deutsche mark. After 1998 the euro assumed the role of dollar performance bellwether when eleven European countries adopted the euro. The number of economies using…
December 2025 and Full 2025 in Figures January 1, 2026 Gold and silver prices soared in 2025, as the dollar experienced its weakest performance in almost a decade. Despite central bank interest rate cuts in Europe and North America, long-term interest rates advanced somewhat. Bitcoin swung all over the place but fell only around 6%…
Japan and China Officials Playing Closer Attention to Their Currencies December 29, 2025 (159) An abbreviated summary of this month’s Bank of Japan Board meeting that lifted the short-term policy interest rate to a 3-decade high of 0.75% states that ” business sentiment has not been weak” and predicts that “next year’s wage hikes at…