Englund

Iran holds the trump card   The last pre-war shipments are arriving in Europe, if they have not already been sucked away by desperate Asian buyers willing to pay higher prices. All Tehran must do is survive for another few months and wait for the oil crunch to really bite. It would take at least 200,000 US ground troops and months of fighting to secure the long Iranian coastline and knock out the remaining missile launchers and drone units hidden in the mountains. US navy is now expected to board and seize Chinese-flagged ships, constituting a direct attack on China’s energy supply chain. This is arguably an act of war – “the law of the jungle”, as Xi Jinping put it on Tuesday morning.  “We will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on collision force with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” he said. The world market for physical oil is already under extreme str...

Twenty years ago the global economy was shaken by a first “China shock” as a wave of low-cost goods destroyed the business models of manufacturers in advanced economies, displacing millions of workers and feeding discontent that fuelled populist politicians including US President Donald Trump.  Now a second shock is under way — one that is even more threatening to China’s trading partners: an assault on high-end manufacturing. Financial Times 14 April 2026 https://www.ft.com/content/7d51a630-a3de-4cc7-9f5f-0f3e7f0d305a?syn-25a6b1a6=1 Uppgången på de amerikanska börserna tilltog på tisdagskvällen efter uppgifter om att fredssamtal mellan Iran och USA kan komma att föras under veckan. Nasdaq Composite steg för tionde handelsdagen i rad  https://www.di.se/live/uppgangen-tilltog-pa-wall-street-teknikjattar-vinnare/ US President Donald Trump said that “something could be happening” over the next two days in Pakistan. Sticking points: Both sides have proposed a suspension in Iranian...

The Magnificent Seven now account for nearly a third of the S&P 500. An S&P 500 index fund generates returns (less exceptionally low fees) that mirror the stock market as a whole, removing the need for people to become stock-pickers.   As of the end of last year, index funds and exchange traded index funds held a combined $30 trillion.  Stock picking has become extinct, almost.  Index funds have stopped being a proxy for the entire market. Why? Because seven companies are now so dominant that the market rises and falls largely based on their performance.  —“the Magnificent Seven,” Wall Street called them.  At the close of 2025, these stocks had returned a remarkable 875 percent in 10 years.  Indeed, over the last three years, they accounted for 55 percent of the market’s total returns, with the other 493 companies in the index making up the other 45 percent.   But as you’ve no doubt noticed, things have gone into reverse so far this y...

  Se nedan Stockholmsbörsen mot röd öppning Efter helgens misslyckade fredsförhandlingar går Stockholmsbörsen mot en öppning i rött territorium. Anders Rudolfsson, investeringsstrateg på Ålandsbanken, tror inte att helgens utveckling kommer att leda till någon kraftigare reaktion när handeln drar igång för veckan.  Enligt Anders Rudolfsson kan fokus på marknaden till viss del skifta bort från oljan under veckan när bolagen nu ska öppna böckerna för det första kvartalet. DI 13 april 2026, 08:14 https://www.di.se/nyheter/stockholmsborsen-mot-rod-oppning-inte-ovantat/ Nedgången på Stockholmsbörsen minskade under eftermiddagen  https://www.di.se/live/borsen-aterhamtade-sig-nibe-rusade/ Nedgången uteblev på Wall Street som stängde på grönt efter uppgifter om att Iran vill ha fred.   https://www.di.se/live/wall-street-rekylerade-upp-mjukvarubolag-draglok/ RE: Marknaden tror att Trump besegrar Iran. Om det blir så blir många ledsna. Just as the market is prone to overreact ...

The prospect that the Iran war will reintensify after the failure of peace talks threatens to spark fresh volatility across global markets, after a week that saw a fragile ceasefire drive stocks up and oil down by the most this year. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-12/wary-investors-eye-another-escalation-in-iran-war-markets-wrap Iran-US peace talks fail;  S&P 500 har tappat 0,9 procent från nivåerna innan kriget bröt ut https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/04/iran-us-peace-talks-fail-s-500-har.html After weeks of scouring headlines and watching tanker traffic, investors are eager to get back to the fundamentals of corporate earnings https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/the-markets-next-test-is-already-here-a08a80fd

Peter Magyar’s Tisza party was headed for a supermajority in parliament that will allow it to deliver on bold promises to dismantle Orban’s self-styled illiberal system.   The outcome also marks a defeat for the nationalist camp in Europe.  But it came as a big relief for the EU, which had struggled to overcome Orban’s obstructionism over the years. “Hungary has chosen Europe,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on X. A two-thirds majority will help a Magyar administration pass key legislation to unlock some of the more than $20 billion in EU funds that had been withheld from the Orban government on rule-of-law and corruption concerns  Boomberg 12 april 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-12/hungarians-sweep-away-orban-after-16-years-in-seismic-election Hungary Won’t Block €90 Billion EU Loan to Kyiv Magyar said at a news conference in Budapest on Monday that his country would maintain its opt-out from participating in the loan f...

After five centuries concentrated in the West and North, power is dispersing to the East and South.  From 1990 to 2025, the share of the world’s gross domestic product held in the Group of Seven (France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, the UK and the US) shrunk from half to a quarter,  while the share held by China, India and Southeast Asia rose from 15% to 55%. Trump has de facto disavowed territorial integrity, self-determination, free trade and human rights — bedrock principles America has championed for 80 years. What Ernest Hemingway wrote about going bankrupt can also be said of the end of the rules-based international order. It happened in two ways: gradually, then suddenly. More nations, especially developing ones, are exercising regional and even global leadership. Poland will soon have Europe’s strongest military. Turkey has the world’s third-largest diplomatic footprint. Qatar has become an essential conflict mediator.  The second trend is an ongoing shift in po...

China produces 94% of rare earth magnets, and 20% of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Chokepoints work fundamentally differently from tariffs, and that distinction exposes the flaws in Trump’s entire approach to economic warfare. This is what I learned from Edward Fishman, who worked on sanctions policy in the Obama administration and literally wrote the book on this subject:  “Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare.”  https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/chokepoints-review-the-dollar-on-defense-08a6c083 Trump assumes other countries will do almost anything to avoid losing access to the enormous American market. But Fishman says the U.S. share of world imports, at 13%, is too small to sway other countries’ behavior. With a few exceptions, most can find substitute markets.  China’s exports to the U.S. fell last year because of tariffs, but exports to the rest of the world more than made up the difference. The Pentagon has known for...

  From Ottoman Sultans to Danish kings, Iran’s toll system for  Strait of Hormuz revives an old maritime fight https://www.ft.com/content/9a5294cf-0b64-4201-b88c-12ba586bb4fd?syn-25a6b1a6=1 Strait of Hormuz och Öresundstullen; Global capital markets are OK with this. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/04/strait-of-hormuz-och-oresundstullen.html

Iran-US peace talks fail https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cn4v0xm9y0kt ”Fomo” lyfter börsen Om Stockholmbörsens muntra humör håller i sig blir det första fredagen sedan krigsutbrottet i Iran som indexen stänger på plus.  Det är förhoppningar inför helgens samtal mellan USA och Iran och uppgifter om fredsframsteg i Ukraina som får investerarna att dra på smilbanden. DI 10 april 2026 S&P 500 har tappat 0,9 procent från nivåerna innan kriget bröt ut https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/04/10-april-islamabad-jd-vance-och.html  

Ett exeempel på hur det ena ger det andra. Lena Andersson: Jag är inte skåning för att jag bor i Skåne Nyligen flyttade jag till Skåne efter att alltid ha bott i Stockholm. Jag kommer framöver att betala skatt till en skånsk kommun, gå till läkaren i Region Skåne, och rösta i en skånsk vallokal. Men skåningarna vet, och jag vet, att jag inte är skåning.  Min bror har bott utomlands sedan 1993, mer än halva sitt liv. Han är en av de svenskaste människor jag känner. Det är ingen merit, men det är vad det är. Numera bor han i Kalifornien. Jag skulle aldrig få för mig att se honom som amerikan. Statsvetaren Andreas Johansson Heinö hävdade häromveckan i sitt nyhetsbrev från Timbro , i en replik till Jimmie Åkesson om svenskhet, att Sverige numera ”bland annat [är] ett muslimskt land”. I mina öron är det ett bisarrt påstående. I en klassisk liberal ordning skiljer man noga på stat och samhälle, offentligt och privat.  Skälen för det har inte försvunnit med tidens gång. Men den prog...

  Vance is leading a US delegation to Islamabad for the first face-to-face talks with Iranian officials since the beginning of the conflict, which has triggered a global energy crisis.  The outcome could determine whether a tenuous two-week ceasefire turns into a lasting peace or ultimately unravels and plunges the region into further conflict. If he succeeds, it could help him burnish his credibility on the world stage ahead of a possible White House run in 2028.  Failure, however, could damage his standing and saddle him with the chunk of the blame. Given Vance’s opposition to so-called forever wars, he has incentive to find a resolution, O’Brien said. If the vice president is unable to secure a deal, it gives Trump more political cover to “start things up again,” he added. Bloomberg 10 April 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-10/vance-emerges-as-trump-s-iran-closer-a-task-fraught-with-risk https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-09/why-the-str...

The Chinese president informed Cheng Li-wun, the chair of Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang party, that Beijing also wanted greater co-operation with all political parties.  Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened military action if it resists in the long term. In her response, Cheng said they would “jointly launch the rejuvenation project of Chinese civilisation”. “Although cross-strait peoples live under different systems, we will respect each other and move towards each other,” she said. FT 10 April 2026 https://www.ft.com/content/e4aecf2e-9975-4b44-b01c-d6f2b8435386?syn-25a6b1a6=1 Nationalist Kina Xi faced some internal criticism for turning the nation into a target by abandoning former leader Deng Xiaoping’s “hide and bide” strategy, which called for keeping a lower international profile while quietly building strength.  Toppmöte i Kairo Chiang Kai-shek var en nationalistisk kinesisk militär och politiker. Han var Kinas ledare från 1927 till inbördeskrigets...