Week of April 22, 2024
We have changed our Monetary Policy signal from green to yellow, given the recent firming of inflationary pressures in the US and the likelihood that the Fed will have to slow its expected pace of monetary easing. We also replaced “China” with “Middle East“ as a focus of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy efforts as result of the clash last week between Iran and Israel (recall that early on in the Biden Administration it was announced that a “pivot” from the Middle East to China would be forthcoming). China’s surfacing economic challenges also give it less capacity to torment Taiwan in the near term.
Bob Bilkie, CFA