Macroeconomics
The key rate, inflation, GDP and the rouble: how decisions at the Bank of Russia reach your portfolio.
16 articles
Sector sensitivity: who reacts how to macro conditionsThe same macroeconomic event lifts some industries and sinks others. The directions, one by one.
Budget and taxes: the second lever alongside the rateThe state influences the economy not only through the policy rate but through spending and taxes — and that lever works differently.
The yield curve: what the market thinks about the futureThe yields of issues of different maturities, lined up, show rate expectations better than any survey.
The labour market: why strong employment can be bad newsA number that everyday logic always reads as good and market logic reads with a sign that depends on the phase.
Deposit or bond: not the same thing at a similar yieldTwo fixed-income instruments are built differently, and the difference shows up exactly when it matters.
Restrictions and infrastructure risk: how it differs from market riskThe risk that an asset cannot be sold or paid out is not captured by volatility and not removed by diversifying across securities.
Money supply and liquidity: why money does not immediately become inflationBetween issuance and rising prices stand the velocity of money and banks' willingness to lend. Without them the money stays in accounts.
Economic cycles: why downturns repeatExpansion, overheating, contraction, recovery — a sequence that differs in the details and repeats in substance.
Exporters and the exchange rate: who gains from a weak roubleForeign-currency revenue against rouble costs — the mechanism by which a weakening rouble lifts part of the market and sinks the rest.
The fiscal rule: why the state sets part of its revenue asideA mechanism that separates budget spending from the current commodity price — and moves the exchange rate along the way.2 min
The balance of payments: where the rouble exchange rate comes fromThe rate is set not by sentiment but by the balance of currency flowing in and out. The balance of payments is the record of that.
The macro calendar: what is published and what of it mattersA great deal of statistics is released and very little of it is significant. What moves the market, and why.
GDP: what the number says and what it does notThe value of everything produced in a period — the figure quoted most often and understood least.2 min
Inflation: how it is measured and why it differs from yoursThe consumer price index measures a basket with average weights. Your basket is not average.
Central bank guidance: why the wording matters more than the decisionA Bank of Russia press release contains a pointer to the future, and that is what the market trades — not the changed number.2 min
The key rate: how a Bank of Russia decision reaches your portfolioOne percentage figure on one instrument most people have never heard of sets deposit yields, the cost of credit and the price of bonds.2 min