Insights

The U.S. labour market surprised to the upside in August 2026, with nonfarm payrolls increasing by 162,000 jobs and the unemployment rate remaining steady at 4.1%. Upward revisions to July’s data also erased previously reported job losses, indicating that the labour...

Australia’s labour market showed signs of weakening in July 2026, with employment falling by 15,800 jobs after two strong months of growth that added more than 118,000 positions. The unemployment rate increased slightly to 4.5%, while the participation rate eased to...

The U.S. labour market weakened significantly in July 2026, with nonfarm payrolls falling by 23,000, marking the first monthly decline in several years. Combined with downward revisions of 103,000 jobs over the previous two months, the report indicates that labour...

Thematic Insight – Rate Reset: How a Year of RBA Swings Rewrote Australia’s Term Deposit Map Twelve months ago, Australian savers expected term deposit rates to continue falling, but 2026 delivered a dramatic turnaround. A resurgence in inflation and successive RBA...

Featured Macro Insight – More Jobs, More Slack: Reading Between the Lines of June’s Labour Data The June Labour Force Survey surprised markets, with employment rising by 76.3k, well above expectations and reversing the weakness seen in April and May. However, the...

Featured Macro Insight – Six-Year Low, One-Week Warning: Inside June’s US Inflation Data Consumer prices actually fell over the month, and the annual pace of inflation cooled by more than economists had pencilled in, reshaping the conversation around the Federal...

Featured Macro Insight – War Meets the Machine: How Conflict and AI are Rewriting the Global Growth Story A World Pulled in Two Directions  Rarely has the global economy been shaped so visibly by two forces pulling in opposite directions. On one side sits the war in...

Featured Macro Insight – Vanishing Act: How a Shrinking Workforce is Masking America’s Jobs Slowdown The U.S. labor market sent a deeply confusing signal in June. Beneath a headline that looked reassuring sits a story that should worry anyone watching the American...

Featured Macro Insight – Australia’s Labour Market Softens as Vacancies Fade and Hiring Stalls Two fresh data releases denote a further drift lower in job vacancies, and a rebound in May employment, that paint a coherent picture of a labour market quietly losing...

Featured Macro Insight – Headline Relief, Underlying Concern: Australia’s May 2026 CPI Unpacked Australia’s monthly CPI indicator for May 2026 delivered a result that, on the surface, appeared encouraging. Headline inflation eased to 4.0% annually, its lowest reading...

Energy Shock, Political Bind: U.S. Inflation Hits a Three-Year High The U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) for May 2026 delivered a result that was elevated but broadly anticipated. Annual inflation surged to 4.2%, its highest reading since 2023, propelled almost...

Featured Macro Insight –  Investment Boom, Consumption Bust: Australia’s Uneven March Quarter Australia’s economy kept growing in the first three months of 2026, but only just. The 0.3% quarterly expansion — the weakest result in a year — fell well short of market...

Summary: Blue Owl Capital Inc. (NYSE: OWL) emerged in the past five years as one of the highest-profile names in U.S. alternative asset management, building a roughly USD 260bn franchise concentrated in private credit, GP stakes, and net lease real estate. Its...

Featured Macro Insight – Borrowed Relief: Australia’s April CPI and the Inflation Road Ahead Australian inflation delivered a headline surprise in April, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rising 0.4% in the month to stand 4.2% higher over the year — a notable...

The Tide Has Turned: April’s Jobs Shock Marks a New Chapter for the Australian Labour Market April’s Labour Force Survey landed with a thud. Employment fell 18,600 defying a market consensus of +15,000 and abruptly halting the modest uptrend that had been forming...

The Second Wave: War, Energy Shock and the Return of Inflation The April CPI reading the hottest since 2023 confirms that energy shock, sticky services, and a squeeze on real wages are converging into a formidable inflation problem that the Federal Reserve cannot...

Executive Overview: The April 2026 Foresight FX Analytics Report presents a materially more constructive outlook for the Australian dollar compared to March 2026. The most consequential development is AUD/USD surging from 0.6901 to 0.7201, a 4.3% gain, with the PPP...

At a time when traditional diversification is failing investors, this paper makes the case for an asset class that has delivered through every major financial crisis of the past two decades. Catastrophe bonds and ILS offer something genuinely rare in modern portfolio...

Traditional Mean-Variance Optimisation (MVO) — the bedrock of portfolio construction since Markowitz in 1952 — has a structural flaw: it forces investors to pre-commit to either a target risk or a target return before optimisation begins. That arbitrary choice...

Behind the Headline: The Structural Fractures in America’s Labour Market The U.S. economy added 115,000 jobs in April 2026, beating a consensus forecast of around 55,000 and keeping the unemployment rate steady at 4.3%. On the surface, the report reads as resilient....

Holding the Line: The Fed’s Most Divided Decision in Over Three Decades The Federal Reserve concluded its April 29 meeting with a decision to hold the federal funds rate unchanged at a target range of 3.50%–3.75% marking the third consecutive meeting without a move....

Growth Without Conviction: Rising Costs Cloud The PMI Recovery Global private sector activity showed tentative signs of stabilization in April 2026, but the recovery remains uneven and increasingly threatened by resurgence in cost pressures linked to the war in the...

Australia on Recession Watch as Oil Shock Amplifies IMF Global Warning The International Monetary Fund has warned that escalating Middle East disruptions could trigger the third global recession this century, shaving up to 1.3 percentage points off world growth to...

US CPI Surges on Energy Shock The US economy absorbed its sharpest inflationary jolt in nearly four years in March, as the Iran conflict triggered a record surge in gasoline prices that quickly fed into headline CPI readings. The consumer price index rose 0.9 percent...

US Labour Market Rebounds Sharply in March as Participation Slips The US labour market staged a strong rebound in March, posting its largest monthly job gain in more than a year. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 178,000, a sharp turnaround from February’s contraction and well...

Australia's Inflation Softens: Moderation Holds but Housing and Energy Risks Build   Australia’s inflation eased marginally in February 2026, with the Consumer Price Index rising 3.7% over the year to February, slightly lower than the 3.8% recorded in January....

Stable on the Surface, Cracking Underneath What the RBA isn’t Saying Out Loud   Caution Beneath the CalmAustralia’s financial system enters 2026 appearing broadly resilient on the surface. Banks remain well capitalised, households are on the mend, and loan losses...

Fed on Hold as Middle East Conflict Redraws the Rate Cut Roadmap   The U.S. Federal Reserve kept its policy rate unchanged at the March 2026 FOMC meeting, maintaining the federal funds target range at 3.5% to 3.75%. The decision came amid a more complex macro...

US Feb Inflation: Cooling Trend Holds Steady amid Component Volatility   The latest US CPI data for February came in line with expectations, supporting the narrative of a gradual easing in inflation. Headline CPI increased by 0.3% month-over-month, bringing the...

War is Loud. Markets, Eventually, are Quiet.   When US and Israeli forces launched joint strikes on Iran at the end of February 2026, three commodity markets told the story instantly. Brent crude surged toward US$119 per barrel at its peak. Gold leapt to US$5,418...