John Grey is a founding editor at Solomon Grey Capital, covering private credit, global macro, and institutional investment strategy across Asia and global markets.
Asia
John Grey — Asia markets desk The Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party met in Beijing on July 30. The readout, published the same evening by Xinhua, ran to a familiar cadence. Beijing acknowledged “difficulties and challenges facing the economy.” It pledged to “accelerate the pace of fiscal spending and
Payments
John Grey — Macro & cross-asset desk On July 9, in a press release out of Brussels, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication announced that its blockchain-based shared ledger was ready for initial use. Seventeen banks from six continents — Citi, HSBC, UBS, BNP Paribas, Wells Fargo, BNY, MUFG,
Macro
John Grey — Asia markets desk The consensus narrative on Japan last week was doom loop. The yen touched 163.99 against the dollar on Thursday, its weakest print since November 1986. The 10-year Japanese government bond yield closed the week at 2.816 percent, a 17-year high. The
M&A
Morgan Stanley is projecting $6.4 trillion of announced M&A in 2026, topping 2021's record. The market is reading this as a leverage cycle redux. Goldman's own survey of 500-plus clients and the financing composition of the largest deals tell a different story: this is a strategic-scale cycle f
Shipping
VLCC daily earnings hit $128,000 last week, war-risk insurance through Hormuz has surged to 10 percent of hull value, and Clarksons's H1 tanker earnings averaged the strongest ever recorded. Owners have responded by ordering 150-plus VLCCs, the highest annual tally since 1973. This is a late-cy
ECB
The ECB held rates on Thursday but Christine Lagarde disclosed that some Governing Council members asked for a hike and called the milder inflation scenario 'quite unlikely.' Bundesbank's Joachim Nagel and Central Bank of Ireland's Gabriel Makhlouf then spent Friday lining up the September case
Treasury
The U.S. Treasury is issuing roughly $270 billion in bills this month, has pushed the bill share of marketable debt to 22 percent from a Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee guideline of 15-20 percent, and is projected to sell $827 billion in bills across 2026 against $360 billion in 2025. Con
Private Credit
BlackRock launched a $12 billion bond deal on Monday to finance a Meta data center in El Paso. It is the second $10-billion-plus off-balance-sheet AI infrastructure vehicle to price inside 30 days, after the Blue Owl-Meta Hyperion structure. The market is trading the deals as validation of the
Federal Reserve
Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan on Thursday became the first FOMC voter to call publicly for a rate hike since Kevin Warsh took over the Fed chairmanship in May. The market read that as a fringe hawkish speech at the end of a slow week. It is not. It is the first live dissent facing a Fed chai
Banks
JPMorgan posted $21.2 billion of Q2 net income, its highest ever. Investment banking fees rose 30 percent. Equities trading revenue rose 86 percent. Global IB fees hit $61.4 billion in the first half, up 24 percent year on year. The market is calling it a dealmaking supercycle. JPMorgan's own CFO Je
Hong Kong
Luxshare Precision raised HK$24.27 billion in Hong Kong last week and its shares fell as much as 9.6 percent on debut. Momenta debuted flat. MiniMax dropped 18 percent intraday when its lock-up expired. The Hong Kong IPO window is open again, but the pricing regime has quietly changed. Scarcity mult
Private Credit
The European Central Bank estimates euro-zone banks hold EUR 62.5 billion in private credit exposure. Insurers hold EUR 211 billion. Pension funds another EUR 52 billion. Those numbers are the ECB's own inference, because the data that would confirm them sits in the United States, and the US Treasur