James Mackintosh

Gold, oil and copper are all down since the election, even as inflation expectations have risen. Have they lost their ability to offer protection?

Crypto bros expect the industry to benefit under the new administration, but it isn’t clear that also means bitcoin itself will benefit.

International fund managers often decry the “macro tourists,” those with a view on an economy who pile into trades in a country’s stock market or a sector without understanding the details. Something similar may have happened in bitcoin since the election: blind buying of the biggest cryptocurrency

Selecting which Trump trades turn into Trump investments is just as difficult this time around as it was in his first term. The right bets might seem obvious now, but they did back then, too.

Investors believe they have a handle on what Donald Trump will do this time. But it’s not obvious that they are any better at assessing politics, or that Trump himself is any more predictable.

Some investments tied to a Trump win clearly worked, but with questionable logic. Others worked but at least in part for the wrong reasons. Some failed miserably.

These narratives can be useful when examining how markets behave, but don’t expect them to explain the economy.

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The U.S. central bank needs to kill its policy of “data dependency”—and get investors thinking about the bigger picture.

Deciding what sectors and companies are cyclical versus defensive has suddenly gotten a lot more complicated.