Three assets dominate every financial crisis: gold, the dollar, and the yen. Understanding how they interact — because they don’t move in lockstep the way beginners expect — is essential market literacy. The hierarchy of safety When genuine panic hits, the market sells everything liquid and buys the dollar first. It’s the world’s funding currency, […]
USD/JPY at 161 has made “the carry trade” the most cited and least understood phrase in finance. Let’s fix that in five minutes. The mechanics A carry trade borrows money where interest rates are low and invests it where rates are high. Japan’s rates sit near zero; America’s are meaningfully higher. So a fund borrows […]
Most investors think about the dollar as background noise. In 2026, it’s the lead instrument — and whether you trade FX or not, its spring surge is already affecting everything you own. Channel one: your stocks Roughly 40% of S&P 500 revenue comes from abroad. When the dollar rises, those foreign earnings translate into fewer […]