MacroLab

Plain-English macro research and a market academy, educational, never advice.

Research Notes

  • The business cycle and the market cycle are not the sameMarkets and the economy are related but not synchronised, one leads, one lags, and confusing them is a classic error. Why the stock market can boom in a recession and slump in a recovery.
  • How to read a CPI report: signal versus noiseInflation day is the noisiest hour of the month. A working-paper guide to what actually matters in a CPI release, the core measure, the monthly pace, and why the market so often ignores the headline.
  • What central banks actually do, and don’tCentral banks are the most watched and least understood institutions in markets. A plain-English account of the tools they really use, the limits they run into, and how to read a policy decision without the mystique.
  • How to read the macro cycle without the jargonGrowth and inflation move in a rhythm, not a straight line. A plain-English map of the four macro quadrants and how to place the economy on it, no acronyms required.
  • Market regimes: why the rules keep changingThe same strategy can look brilliant for years and then quietly stop working. The reason is regime change, and learning to spot when the market’s operating rules have shifted is a skill in its own right.
  • Rates, inflation and your portfolio: a plain-English mapInterest rates and inflation are the gravity of markets, they pull on everything. A jargon-free explanation of how they connect and why the link is looser than headlines suggest.
  • Correlation is not destiny: reading cross-asset linksMarkets are a web of relationships, bonds, currencies, commodities and stocks all tugging on each other. A guide to reading those cross-asset links without mistaking a temporary correlation for an iron law.
  • What the yield curve is actually telling youThe yield curve is the market's most famous crystal ball, and its most misunderstood. What inversion and steepening really signal, and why the timing is always fuzzier than the headline.
  • How to read the economic calendarThe economic calendar looks like an intimidating wall of releases. A practical framework for triaging it, which events move markets, which to ignore, and how to prepare for a data day before it arrives.
  • Building a repeatable market-research routineGood macro reading is a habit, not a talent. A practical weekly routine for staying informed without drowning, what to track, what to ignore, and how to turn news into a running view.
  • The macro mistakes that trip up new tradersMost early mistakes in macro are not about being wrong on direction, they are about how you think. Five recurring traps, from mistaking noise for signal to falling in love with a narrative.
  • Real versus nominal: the distinction that changes everythingOne small adjustment separates clear thinking from confusion in economics: the difference between real and nominal. Strip out inflation, and half the market’s puzzles resolve themselves.
  • Fiscal policy: the lever most readers forgetMarkets obsess over central banks and barely mention the other great lever on the economy, government spending, taxation and borrowing. A plain-English guide to fiscal policy, and why it is quietly reasserting itself.
  • Credit spreads: the market’s smoke detectorLong before a downturn reaches the headlines, it often shows up in the price of corporate debt. What a credit spread is, why it widens, and how to read the market’s most reliable early-warning system.
  • Why the whole world watches the dollarThe US dollar is not just America’s currency, it is the plumbing of the global financial system. Why its moves ripple into every market on earth, and what the “dollar smile” really describes.
  • Commodity supercycles: the slow tide under pricesBeneath the daily noise of oil and metal prices runs a much slower rhythm measured in decades, not days. What a commodity supercycle is, what drives it, and why it is so easy to misread.
  • Skinny Higgins: the entrepreneur who read the economic cycleA profile of Skinny Higgins, an entrepreneur who timed business decisions to the macro cycle, reading regimes, rates and correlations to know when to expand and when to hold. Illustrative success stories, plain-English, educational only.
  • Currency regimes: pegs, floats and the impossible trinityWhy can some countries set their own interest rates and others can’t? The answer is a hard constraint every currency lives under, the impossible trinity, explained without a single equation.
  • Reading central-bank body languageA rate decision is the smallest part of a central-bank meeting. The real information is in the language, the projections and the dissent, how to read the signals around the number without the mystique.
  • Why recessions surprise almost everyoneDownturns are the most forecast and least predicted events in economics. The reason is not stupidity, it is that economies turn nonlinearly, and the tools we use to spot trouble are built to miss it.
  • Liquidity: the hidden driver markets rarely nameSometimes prices move and no story explains it. Often the answer is liquidity, the ease with which money moves through the system. A plain-English guide to the market’s most invisible force.

All research notes