Opinion

It was March 2015 when Otmar Issing, an early board member of the ECB and the bank’s former chief economist, poured me a cup of coffee. Like two war veterans, we sat on the 60th floor of the Messeturm in Frankfurt, gazing out at the smoke plumes marring the city’s skyline. Issing had seen something like it before—just as I had.

As we approach the milestone of President Donald Trump’s first one hundred days back in the White House, it is time to assess the impact his administration has had on both policy and markets.

Whether you walk away believing that President Trump will make the world “fairer,” dream of Trumpian tax cuts and deregulation, or recoil at his trade wars and extreme unpredictability, the harsh reality is that all of it inevitably comes with more volatility and less growth.

In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly permeating the financial sector, institutional investors are understandably asking the question: how much does ChatGPT really know about finance? The answer is more nuanced than many might expect.

The conversations around the family dinner table during the market turmoil caused by Trump’s tariffs were likely very different in the US and the EU.

The markets crashed this week, so it’s only a matter of time before juicy headlines start popping up on (social) media eager to pour fuel on the fire. But I have to admit, I didn’t quite see this one from Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf coming: “Pension funds tremble amid stock market turmoil.”

Following Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day,” investors are grappling with a fundamental question: Is a trading order possible that is less dependent on the United States? Or are we on the brink of a new Great Depression, as some doomsayers suggest?

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan became known for his hardline stance against the Soviet Union—a strategy that ultimately contributed to the end of the Cold War. Today, we see Donald Trump adopting a similarly confrontational approach, but this time on the economic battlefield.

This week marked the 22nd edition of the Mining Forum Europe in Zurich. For a long time, it was an insider-only event mainly attended by mining companies, but with the recent surge in the gold price, there was much more room this time for a broader, macro-driven perspective.

“The total value of Dutch securities holdings reached nearly 3,500 billion euros in 2024.” It’s one of those headlines—this one from the Dutch Central Bank (DNB)—that most investors overlook, let alone actually read. But behind that enormous figure lies a world that once again shows how deeply entrenched the traditional investment industry remains in an outdated mantra.