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11 Jul 2025

JP Morgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon warned European leaders they have a competitiveness problem and that they are currently “losing” the battle to rival the US and China.

“Europe has gone from 90 per cent US GDP to 65 per cent over 10 or 15 years. That’s not good,” Dimon said at an event in Dublin organised by the Irish foreign ministry. “You’re losing.” The comments from Dimon, one of the most influential voices in global finance, underscore the challenges facing the EU as it battles to invigorate its economy. Mario Draghi, the continent’s former top central banker, last year demanded a new industrial strategy for Europe with annual investment of €800bn to maintain competitiveness with the US and China. “We’ve got this huge strong market and our companies are big and successful, have huge kinds of scale that are global. You have that, but less and less,” Dimon said. It is an even blunter message from Dimon than he made in his most recent annual shareholder meeting in April, where he said “Europe has some serious issues to fix”, and urged European nations to “significantly reform their economies so they can grow”. Source: FT

9 Jul 2025

Euro makes new all-time highs every day in trade weighted terms.

Indeed, many countries - above all China - are pegged to the dollar. That supercharges the rise in Euro vs USD (white), taking Euro to stratospheric levels in trade-weighted terms (orange). Is inflation coming for the Euro zone... Source: Bloomberg, Robin Brooks

8 Jul 2025

European stocks are trading at a wider-than-usual discount vs their US counterparts, per Goldman

Source: Markets & Mayhem on X

2 Jul 2025

Magnificent European Aerospace & Defence

Source: @MikeZaccardi on X

30 Jun 2025

This chart from, BNP / EPFR indicates that the strong outperformance of European stocks this year was primarily driven by US investors shifting their investments into Europe.

In contrast, European investors made only modest shifts. Source: HolgerZ

30 Jun 2025

The top 3 country equity ETFs so far in 2025:

1) Poland $EPOL: +54.5% 2) Greece $GREK: +52.2% 3) Austria $EWO: +42.6% Source: Charlie Bilello

25 Jun 2025

We have a new YTD country ETF leader -> Greece

Source: Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT, MBA

25 Jun 2025

Germany and Italy are facing calls to move their gold out of New York following President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the US Federal Reserve and increasing geopolitical turbulence.

Fabio De Masi, a former Die Linke MEP who joined the leftwing populist BSW party, told the Financial Times that there were “strong arguments” for relocating more gold to Europe or Germany “in turbulent times”. Germany and Italy hold the world’s second- and third-largest national gold reserves after the US, with reserves of 3,352 tonnes and 2,452 tonnes, respectively, according to World Gold Council data. Both rely heavily on the New York Federal Reserve in Manhattan as a custodian, each storing more than a third of their bullion in the US. Between them, the gold stored in the US has a market value of more than $245bn, according to FT calculations. The Taxpayers Association of Europe has sent letters to the finance ministries and central banks of both Germany and Italy, urging policymakers to reconsider their reliance on the Fed as a custodian for their gold. Source: FT

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