John Authers

China and the US are ever more at loggerheads. Why doesn't it appear to matter? Chinese leaders are more assertive, and more openly critical of the US, than at any time since the death of Chairman Mao, while the US has amped up anti-Chinese rhetoric to new heights. Beyond trade protectionism, the…

Bricks and mortar are impervious to viruses. And if any sector of the US economy has made a true V-shaped recovery, it appears to be home-building. The latest survey of the National Association of Home Builders shows that the proportion seeing decent conditions is back almost to its highs of the…

There is an old joke about economists, and how badly they compare with real scientists. A physicist, a chemist and an economist are shipwrecked on a desert island, with nothing to eat, other than a crate of tins of baked beans which has also washed up on shore. But there is no tin opener. What to…

Monday wasn't a good day for the efficient markets hypothesis. The idea, you may recall, is that markets incorporate all known information at all times, and thus follow a trendless “random walk,” jumping up or down according to the latest piece of news. Monday’s trading in the S&P 500 certainly…

It is difficult not to think in circles about Covid-19. There is a welter of research out there, very little of it yet subject to intensive peer review. Whatever your initial bias, someone somewhere has research to confirm it. To organize thinking, I would like to highlight just one piece of…

China, its troublesome credit system and its shaky relationship with the West dominated global markets for years. Then it gave the world the coronavirus. And now, somehow it has slipped from attention, dropping down investors’ lists of concerns. This is strange because something important is afoot…

Marketing for mutual funds always carries the disclaimer that past performance is no guarantee of future returns. And of course it isn’t. But the degree to which past performance fails to persist over time goes far beyond the ups and downs of the market, and remains one of the biggest arguments…

The year is still not half over. The history of Covid-19, and how it should best be combated, will not be written for a long while yet. So far, 2020 has already seen prognostications that the pandemic could mean the end of Xi Jinping and the communist regime in China, and that socialized or…

The bull market in stocks that galloped on for a decade after 2009 was widely described as the most hated rally in history. It took many by surprise (myself included), and came even as money flowed into bonds. Stock markets outside the US behaved roughly as they were supposed to do after a big…

President Trump believes that trade wars are good, and easy to win. Many disagree. But what about capital wars? Friday brought the revelation by Bloomberg News that the White House was considering measures to limit portfolio capital flows into China. We’ve since had a clarification that this…