The world is engaged in a trade war which hits manufacturing and industry more than services and consumption. The composition of the Chinese economy makes it vulnerable. The Chinese are a proud people and will claim that the rebalancing is an intentional project rather than a phenomenon forced upon them. China’s markets are still closed

Beware negative interest rates. The intention of central banks imposing negative rates upon an economy is to stimulate growth. But if 10 years of falling rates have done little to stimulate demand, 7 of those at close to zero interest rates, why would negative rates encourage more demand? Taken in the extreme, negative interest rates

2016 began with very weak equity and credit markets. Markets reacted strangely and counterintuitively to data and central bank policy. So, how does one invest in times like this? Ideally, one invests in precisely the same way one invests in calm markets. When the herd is panicking, calm is the scarce resource and therefore valuable.

China’s growth is evidently slowing and investors are concerned. China is the second largest economy in the world, and it is a manufacturing hub importing commodities and intermediate goods and exporting finished goods. More recently, China has extended its connectivity beyond trade in material goods but has sought participation in and sometimes led the establishment

Global trade has stagnated since 2011. Why has trade stagnated? In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008/9 countries realized that their consumers were weakened, their businesses were discouraged, and their governments had used much financial reserves to bailout their banking systems. The only feasible driver of output was trade. All countries therefore