An update on the latest news, insights, and market views shaping global wealth management and investment trends.

Weekly Snapshot

This section highlights weekly performance, notable volatility, and significant currency moves shaping investor sentiment.

• In the week the last dovish central banker left the room,  the S&P is down -1.5% and the Nasdaq is down -1.8% Europe was down -3.8% The Nikkei was down -2.0% China’s mainland market was down -2.2%
• The Iran conflict has become the dominant force in global bond markets this week, with the strike on Ras Laffan and the resulting oil spike ($119 Brent intraday) forcing a wholesale repricing of the rate path. The Fed's explicit refusal to ‘look through’ the energy shock sent the US 2-year yield to 3.95%, sitting some 20bps above the upper bound of the fed funds range. That spread, historically a signal of policy inertia, is now being read as a staging post for hikes. Germany's 10-year Bund, similarly repriced by ECB hawkishness, broke 3%,  its highest since 2011
• The most acute move was in UK gilts, where the 10-year crossed 5%, as the Bank of England's surprise unanimous hold and explicit abandonment of its easing bias landed on top of an economy acutely exposed to energy import costs. With the conflict now entering its third week and no visible off-ramp on energy infrastructure targeting, markets have effectively abandoned any hope of BoE cuts this year and are pricing a hike as early as May. The pattern is global: where central banks entered this shock with dovish optionality, the conflict has methodically stripped it away
• Brent opened the week at $102 and spiked to $119.13 on Thursday following the Ras Laffan strikes before pulling back to around $110 on Friday. The EIA's March outlook noted Brent had already risen roughly 50% since the start of the year, with the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz cited as the principal driver of both crude and LNG supply disruption. European and Asian gas prices have surged accordingly; Henry Hub is more insulated currently , but the EIA forecasts it to average $3.80/MMBtu for 2026 (from the current $3.07)

• Gold opened the week around $5’000 and traded down sharply, settling near $4’564 by Friday, a loss of nearly 9% in a week where geopolitical fear was peaking. The paradox is explainable: the Fed's hawkish pivot and the BoE's surprise hold drove real yields sharply higher across the curve, and non-yielding gold simply cannot compete when rate expectations ratchet up this fast
• Bitcoin and Ethereum entered this week's risk-off episode in a fundamentally different position than most risk assets. The damage had largely been done. Bitcoin peaked near $126’000 in October 2025 before declining close to 50% peak-to-trough, falling below $66’000 in early February, a selloff that preceded the Iran conflict entirely. The result is that when the Middle East escalation intensified this week, crypto found a floor rather than a trapdoor. Bitcoin held the $70’000 area, and Ethereum $2’000 , levels the market had already tested and absorbed in February. Both notably failed to follow equities lower with any conviction. It is tempting to think that with speculative excess already wrung out, the marginal seller is largely gone. Whether that translates into a recovery depends on the macro backdrop normalising; but for now, the asset class is behaving less like a leveraged risk proxy and more like one that has already priced in considerable bad news
• The dollar's behaviour this week was a study in competing forces,  and the result was a rare paradox: a safe-haven currency that ended the week lower in the middle of an active war. The DXY rallied above 100 by mid-week on the back of the Fed's hawkish hold and hotter PPI data, then faded to 99.53 by Friday,  on track to lose around 1% on the week. The explanation could lie in what happened on Thursday. The ECB, Bank of Japan, and Bank of England all held rates but signalled a bias toward tighter policy,  the Iran conflict's feared inflation spillover is forcing central banks that were cutting to pivot, compressing the rate differential that had kept the dollar bid

Geopolitical Landscape

A summary of key political and geopolitical developments during the week that may influence global markets and impact portfolio positioning.

• Iran and Israel exchanged strikes on key energy infrastructure this week, complicating US efforts to stabilise markets as the conflict enters its third week. Qatar's industrial hub of Ras Laffan sustained significant damage following an Iranian attack. President Trump called for de-escalation on energy site strikes, claiming Israel would refrain from further attacks on the South Pars gas field, while threatening retaliation should Iran target Qatari LNG infrastructure again. QatarEnergy who runs the Ras Laffan site (the world’s biggest LNG plant) said strikes will cost about $20bn a year in lost revenue and take up to five years to repair. PM Netanyahu said Israel would avoid attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure, while Donald Trump told reporters he had no intention of sending troops
• Donald Trump demanded other countries help secure passage for ships in the Strait of Hormuz as Iran attacks disrupt energy markets. The UAE’s key Fujairah Port is said to have again been targeted in a strike.
• President Trump has increased pressure on NATO allies to contribute militarily to the Iran conflict, threatening to revisit US membership in the alliance. The threat, however, is widely viewed as leverage rather than genuine intent. For Europe, joining the conflict is a non-starter politically: energy costs have already surged as a direct consequence of the Iran strikes, the public has no appetite for further escalation, and there is no visible exit ramp from the military operation

Macroeconomic Developments

Key macroeconomic data releases and economic indicators across major regions and individual countries, providing insight into growth trends, and the broader economic outlook.

• Fed officials held interest rates steady and continued to project a single cut this year, while acknowledging heightened uncertainty stemming from the Middle East conflict. Jerome Powell stressed that any resumption of easing will be conditional on progress on inflation, particularly goods inflation, which remains elevated due to tariffs. The committee voted 11–1 to keep the fed funds rate in the 3.5%–3.75% range, with Governor Stephen Miran dissenting in favour of a 25-basis point cut
• The Bank of England held its reference rate at 3.75% in a unanimous 9–0 vote. It is a hawkish surprise that reflects growing concern over inflation spillovers from the Middle East conflict. The committee explicitly abandoned its prior easing bias, replacing it with a ‘ready to act’ stance that keeps a rate hike firmly on the table at the next meeting should the energy shock deepen further
• The ECB also held, its policy rate remains at 2% as expected, while upgrading inflation projections and downgrading growth amid Middle East–driven uncertainty. Governing Council member Joachim Nagel said that the ECB will need to consider hiking interest rates as soon as next month if price pressures build further due to the Iran war
• The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) raised its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to 4.1% in a 5–4 vote, marking its second consecutive hike
• The Chinese economy rebounded at the start of 2026, driven by consumption and investment, though the momentum may prove difficult to sustain in the context of the Iran conflict. Industrial output rose 6.3% year-on-year, retail sales 2.8%, and fixed-asset investment 1.8%
• President Trump and Japan PM Sanae Takaichi announced GE Vernova and Hitachi will build small nuclear reactors in Tennessee and Alabama for up to $40bn

Corporate & Sector Highlights

Insights into notable developments among major global companies and sectors, including earnings results, strategic initiatives, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory developments, and trends influencing corporate performance.

• Tencent reported its full-year and fourth-quarter 2025 results this week, posting revenues of RMB 194.4bn ($28.2bn) for the final quarter,  a 13% year-on-year increase,  with profit rising 18% over the same period. The strong performance was broad-based, spanning gaming, advertising, and cloud services. Tencent's international games business exceeded $10bn in annual revenue for the first time, while AI cloud operations swung to an adjusted operating profit of RMB 5bn ( $725mio) for the full year. The company has been weaving agentic capabilities into its product ecosystem,  including WeChat, China's dominant social and messaging app. Capital expenditure more than tripled over the course of 2025 as the company pressed ahead with its AI infrastructure buildout, competing against domestic rivals including Alibaba. Profit estimates for 2026 will likely come under pressure as rising AI costs. The company's risk profile is also set to rise as near-term AI monetization will remain limited, with management targeting long-term returns. Reduced share buybacks will partially fund the rising investment costs
• Alibaba delivered a disappointing quarter, with revenue up just 1% and adjusted EBITA down 58%, weighed down by weak e-commerce performance and heavier investment in AI and quick commerce. The numbers reflect a company in uncomfortable transition: the legacy advertising and retail engine is stalling while the next growth layer,  cloud, AI, instant delivery,  is still burning cash rather than generating it. Management struck a cautiously optimistic tone, pointing to early signs of a consumption recovery and an expected stabilisation in EBITA ahead. The broader read is that China's two tech giants reported the same week with opposite narratives: Tencent accelerating into AI with conviction and visible returns; Alibaba still searching for the right footing
• Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com launched its Joybuy marketplace across six European markets (UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg), it is the company's most ambitious overseas expansion to date. Unlike rivals such as Temu and AliExpress, which operate as third-party marketplaces largely shipping from China, JD is positioning Joybuy as a direct retailer backed by local warehousing and its own last-mile delivery network, JoyExpress. Over 100,000 products are available at launch, including goods from Apple, Samsung, Sony, and Philips, with same-day delivery covering more than 15 million European households. To take on Amazon Prime directly, JD has introduced a subscription tier called JoyPlus at an introductory price of €3.99 per month
• Nebius, the Nvidia-backed cloud infrastructure group, has struck a deal with Meta worth up to $27bn, it follows a Microsoft agreement last year and cements Nebius as one of the go-to hyperscale infrastructure partners. The announcement arrives against an uncomfortable backdrop: Reuters reports Meta is considering reducing its workforce by 20% or more to offset surging AI capex,  a move JPMorgan estimates could save $5–6bn annually, though that barely registers against a projected expense base of $162–169bn
• Micron delivered a solid quarter and an even more striking outlook: their Q3 revenue guidance of $33.7bn would represent a 903% year-on-year earnings jump and, notably, exceed the company's total annual revenue for every year through fiscal 2024! The driver is AI data center demand, which has created a severe shortage at the high end of memory and storage. After more than a decade as a commoditised business tied to PC and smartphone cycles, Micron is operating in a structurally different environment: the constraint is now supply, not demand

Chart of the Week

No Way Around It

When Iran struck Ras Laffan this week, the market reaction was not just about Qatar's gas,  it was about geography. The graphic below tells you why. Of the 55bn cubic feet of LNG traded daily in 2024, fully 21% passes through the Strait of Hormuz alone, making it the single most critical bottleneck in global energy supply.

The map also captures how fragile the existing alternatives already are. Since 2023, Houthi attacks have effectively zeroed out the Bab el-Mandeb passage, pushing all LNG traffic onto the longer, costlier Cape of Good Hope route, which now handles 10% of global LNG trade, up from near zero three years ago. Add the Strait of Malacca at 17% and you have three chokepoints collectively handling nearly half of all LNG shipped worldwide, all of them operating under elevated geopolitical stress simultaneously.

This week's Ras Laffan strike was a shot at the world's largest LNG export facility, sitting precisely at the mouth of Hormuz. The energy market is not overreacting, it is correctly pricing a risk that this chart makes clear.

Source: Visual Capitalist - US EIA