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.

Inflation appears to be moderating, and the US jobs market remains resilient although perhaps showing some cracks. Mr Trump used the inflation data as a reason to justify "demanding that" the Fed slash the Fed Fund rate by 100bps. Trade policy continues to zigzag, with investors starting to mostly ignore the rhetoric coming from the administration. Stocks and bonds were better through Thursday, with gold higher and the greenback weaker. The Israeli bombing of Iran overnig

The 1Q2025 is in the bag, not an easy quarter. US stocks performed poorly, but gold and European stocks did well. Treasuries also did ok.

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?