The melt up continued in risk markets until late Friday morning, when a post of Mr Trump's Truth Social website reported that the U.S. would impose additional 100% tariffs on Chinese imports into the U.S. starting Nov 1st because of further restrictions by China on their export of critical earth minerals. In any event, this one way trajectory up needed a pause. Monday will be interesting!

It was a slow drift lower in US stocks and bonds this past week, although Friday's PCE (inflation, August) and other economic data was sufficiently balanced to create a slight bounce. Global stocks were mixed, with U.K. and Japanese stocks generating the best returns WoW.

After drifting lower much of the week, US stocks and bonds got a significant uplift on Friday from Fed Chairman Powell's comments at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium.

This article is an update of my personal portfolio at the end of 1H2025 (June 30, 2025). To say it was a volatile quarter is the mother of all understatements. Fortunately, I came out OK thanks to the fact that investors – especially in the bond market – provided guardrails for the nutty economic policies of Mr Trump. I saw the train wreck coming, but I failed to anticipate the shockingly fast recovery. You can read the gory details in this article.

This article contains a summary of full-year 2024 performance of the indices and assets tracked by EMC, plus historical data, too.

This is a guest post about gold, penned by online investment firm BullionVault. Gold has just pierced $2,100/oz, reaching a record high.

Since I write a lot about markets and macroeconomic topics, it is only fair that I talk about my own investment portfolio.

The Street pros provide year-end 2023 projections for stocks and bonds, so why not EMC? Here are my guesstimates and rationales.

2022 has been an abysmal year for most indices and asset classes globally, with the exceptions being oil, gold and the FTSE 100. Now what?