Real Vision: Finance & Investing

A brand isn’t a thing or a service, it’s an emotion. Feelings are what drive commerce. Marketing and brand visionary Jonathan Cropper has lived on the edge of innovation throughout his career working with luxury brands like Aston Martin and alongside music industry titans Quincy Jones and Sean Combs. Cropper believes seduction and storytelling are at the basic core of the best sales strategies, an...

U.S. equity indexes soared on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting a near 800-point gain and the S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq Composite rising 1.86% and 0.92% two hours ahead of the close of regular trading. Equity futures indicated a positive open after Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled a willingness to negotiate with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy. Still, fightin...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked global financial markets, highlighted by a 31% spike in the spot price for European natural gas. Brent crude oil crossed the psychologically significant $100-per-barrel mark, and the May 2022 Euronext wheat contract surged by nearly 8%. U.S. equity markets were mixed two hours ahead of the close of regular trading, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and...

Investors face a dilemma of seemingly mythological proportions, stuck between the Scylla of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Charybdis of the Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle. And one monster theoretically feeds the other, as rising geopolitical tensions continue to drive crude oil and natural gas prices higher and add to inflation pressures in the United States. President Joe Biden’s sanctio...

The crisis in Eastern Europe has escalated to new levels, as Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized the deployment of troops to rebel-held areas of Ukraine. Prices for energy commodities, including crude oil and natural gas, spiked on the news. And wheat, a key export from the region, is also rising. Weston Nakamura joins Ash Bennington for a look at the geopolitical situation through the len...

In the previous part 1 video of Weston Nakamura’s series on the Bank of Japan, Weston explains how BOJ Yield Curve Control works, and discusses the implications of being the only major central bank left who claims to still provide highly accommodative monetary policy in 2022. In this part two video, Weston shares his long-running theory on "BOJ Press Tests,” conducted behind the scenes by the cent...

Independent volatility trader, Darrin Johnson, believes trading volatility is the key to success in the market. In this invaluable episode, Johnson sits down with Jason Buck to reveal the key trading principles he follows and the importance of “standing out” professionally. Starting from the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey, the largely self-taught trader stresses the importance of educati...

Christian Alexander of Macro Link is one of the best-connected insiders in the hedge fund industry -- a "Jerry Maguire" figure with a broad and deep list of contacts. Three years ago, he spoke with Roger Hirst about the future of the industry, when "easy money" was the dominant regime. And, in November, he shared his thoughts on inflation with Maggie Lake, before wholesale and consumer prices spik...

“GOLD.” That’s it; that’s the tweet Jared Dillian has published twice in the last couple days, as the yellow metal has surged more than 2%. A store of value (and a medium of exchange) for millennia, gold didn’t respond as inflation fears swelled during 2021. Now that the Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index are hitting multi-decade highs, though, alongside still-rising tension in East...

As detailed in the just-released minutes of the January meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, U.S. central bankers are going to tighten faster than they did during their last rate-hiking cycle. And they’ve accelerated plans to shrink the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. Still, Jerome Powell and company will be challenged to rein in inflation while keeping both investors and consumers happy...

The Producer Price Index, a measure of wholesale prices and a key input for consumer prices, rose 1% in January, doubling the 0.5% consensus forecast. The PPI was up 9.7% year over year, easing from the 13-year-high readings of 9.8% for the previous two months. Increases were registered across the board, but goods prices continue to lead services prices. It’s more fodder for a Federal Reserve pois...

Equity indexes faded into the close today, as investors continue to weigh prospects for a diplomatic solution to the simmering problem in Eastern Europe. U.S. President Joe Biden issued an ultimatum to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is shuttling between Kyiv and Moscow Monday and Tuesday. Meanwhile, St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bul...

Renowned author, professional trader and quantitative analyst Euan Sinclair describes the subtle difference between inefficiency and risk premium in options and markets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Inflation is rampant globally, and the world’s major central banks are all taking decisive measures to tighten policy in their respective ways, with the exception of one major developed market central bank: the Bank of Japan. Weston Nakamura is based in Tokyo, Japan and has been monitoring, analyzing and trading the BOJ throughout Governor Kuroda’s controversial tenure, and explains how the Bank o...

The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index for February read 61.7, down from 67.2 in January, well short of a median estimate of 67, and the lowest print since October 2011 – even lower than April 2020, when the global economy was locked down. “To put it bluntly,” notes Jim Bianco, president and macro strategist at Bianco Research, “this was not a good report.” And the decline was largely...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning that the Consumer Price Index for January 2022 was up 0.6% and 7.5% year over year. St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard said he’s become "dramatically" more hawkish in light of the hottest inflation in nearly 40 years. Bullard, a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, would now like to see a total of 100 basis poi...

Japan Machine Tool Orders, the best leading indicator of the global industrial cycle, accelerated in January. And recent data suggest the backlog at Los Angeles Port may begin to ease by summer. At the same time, the coming Federal Reserve rate-hiking cycle is a major wild card for investors. Darius Dale, founder and CEO of 42 Macro, joins Real Vision’s Maggie Lake to talk about why, according to...

President Emmanuel Macron of France met with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Moscow on Monday and emerged with what seemed like good news: There’d be no further escalation of the Ukraine crisis. Indeed, equity indexes rallied, and crude oil prices backed off seven-year highs. But the Kremlin, while conceding the meeting had provided the basis for further work toward deescalation, said Macron...

The small-cap Russell 2000 Index posted an impressive 14.8% gain during 2021, but nearly all of it came in the first quarter. And weakness over the ensuing nine months carried into the first month of 2022, when the index shed 9.7%. Francis Gannon, co-chief investment officer of Royce Investment Partners, notes this frustrating performance came despite generally strong earnings growth for small-cap...

Mike Green sits down with Louis Vincent Gave, CEO of Gavekal Research, to examine the political and economic climate of China. They look at China's 'outsized' role in the world and what impact joining the WTO had on the Chinese nearly two decades ago. The conversation also looks to the future -and the possibility of a digital currency in China -in time for the Beijing Olympics. Learn more about yo...

Weston Nakamura closes his long Sony Corp. (NYSE: SONY)/short Technology Select SPDR Fund (NYSE: XLK) market-neutral pair trade, as SONY shares rallied following an intraday trading halt on news of its acquisition of Bungie for $3.6 billion Weston shares his thought process and overall assessment. Though it was a net-profitable trade in an environment of elevated global equity volatility, Weston’s...

It wasn’t just the nonfarm payrolls data for January that moved markets on Friday. Upward revisions to prior months’ reports put a fresh glow on the U.S. economy – and also invited questions about Federal Reserve policy. “Too late the hawk” is how Harry Melandri might put it. Melandri, currently an advisor with MI2 Partners and formerly of Deutsche Asset Management and the Bank of England, notes t...

European Central Bank President Christine LaGarde now concedes the potential need for a rate hike in 2022 in the face of record-high inflation on the Continent, the same day the Bank of England announced a second consecutive increase to its benchmark rate since 2004 and began its “quantitative tightening” process. Meanwhile, on Wall Street, both Facebook parent Meta and PayPal have experienced mas...

The ADP employment report for January showed a net loss of jobs, consumer spending is slowing, and President Biden is sending 3,000 troops to Eastern and Central Europe in response to Russian aggression against Ukraine. Like Apple’s, Alphabet’s fourth-quarter results blew away expectations. But those look like exceptions to the rule of a generally mixed earnings picture. Against increasing economi...

It’s already been a good year for hydrocarbons, with crude oil and natural gas prices rising along with geopolitical tensions in Central Europe. The threat of war is now driving up prices of agricultural commodities, including wheat, barely, corn, and rapeseed, with consequences far beyond the region. Tony Greer, founder of TG Macro and editor of the Morning Navigator newsletter, joins Real Vision...