Equity captures the upside of the AI build-out, while credit absorbs the loss if it fails – yet creditors are compensated with under 1% p.a. on 5-year bonds and around 2% on 10-year.
A challenging but still holding macroeconomic backdrop. Global growth is expected to ease to +2.5% in 2026 before rebounding to +2.9% in 2027, propped up significantly by AI investment, which alone contributes roughly a third of US growth.
Central bank credibility is becoming a risk rather than a background condition. At Jackson Hole, the new Fed Chairman called for a quieter central bank, breaking with two decades of managing expectations while the US Treasury is co-steering financial conditions through debt maturity and buybacks.
High financial literacy is key to building wealth, yet it remains the exception. Only 17% of respondents in Allianz Research's latest Financial Literacy Report score as highly literate, while one in four score low — largely unchanged from 2023.
Most technologies create value before they create problems, but quantum computing may break that pattern. Imagine two clocks ticking side by side: one measures the time until quantum computers become economically useful, the other the time until they can break the cryptography that underpins the financial system.
The 60/40 portfolio has quietly stopped working. The risk-adjusted return investors could reasonably expect from the standard balanced portfolio has fallen to roughly a third of its long-run level, from a Sharpe ratio of 0.47 to just 0.14.
Political fragility is now a key driver of European sovereign bond risk, particularly ahead of the 2027 elections in France and Italy. Since QE ended, it has significantly increased borrowing costs and could keep bond spreads elevated.
With Section 122's flat 10% tariff expiring on 24 July, the switch to Section 301 and Section 338 tariffs will send the US average import tariff back above 2025's IEEPA-era level to 12.4%, up from a May low of 7.7%.
