This week I got a real taste of the Murphy’s Law. Last week when I was fairly free, the world was fairly stable. This week, when I was extremely busy, plenty of events happened. Sometimes it just be like that I guess.

But on the bright side, the house sales is mostly done now, the date for the move to Thailand is set for the first week of October and my new business entity is being processed as we speak. Now there are only visas, tickets, accommodation and packing left (sic!). You can imagine that my days are a bit busy now amid all of these - thus the slight delay with the deep dives vs the regular programming you are used to.

On the other hand, the quality has been exceptional lately ;). The Fed rates article is coming this week and it’s looking to be another long and great one. Hit that subscribe button if you still haven’t, you don’t want to miss that one.

Weekly Outlook

This week we have plenty of material to cover. From Ukraine, through the Middle East to the more localized developments across all continents.

US Inc.

After the Alaska meeting between Trump and Putin, we were hit with another photo-op opportunity on Monday, when European leaders along with Zelensky came to Washington to present their case in the Ukrainian war resolution. The meeting was full of “surprises”, with extensive talks about security guarantees, a few press conferences and an unexpected direct call to Vladimir Putin to discuss a trilateral meeting between Putin, Trump and Zelensky that supposedly resulted in a preliminary agreement to actually have it (sic!).

While the pundits were fast to start discussing different venues for the meeting as well as possible peace terms, they completely ignored the writing on the wall - neither meeting produced any real, tangible results. Both in case of the Alaska meeting as well as the Washington one, big words from Trump were everything we got.

Starting Tuesday, the whole farce started to slowly unravel. First blows came from Russia that dismissed all the talks about security guarantees, saying that any security guarantees devised by the west would need to be approved by Russia. It was a major blow, as it implied that there was no agreement even about the high-level scope of such guarantees.

Then Europe came into offensive with Kaja Kallas saying in an interview that Ukraine shouldn’t be pushed to give up territory. Something that was implied to be a non-negotiable demand from Russia. And so the whole farce unraveled, with now no expectations of a bi or trilateral meeting between the interested parties and no progress towards any peace or ceasefire agreement. Back to square one once again with Trump threatening a sanctions package that he will never deliver on. And so went away any good chances Trump will win a Nobel Peace Prize:

What can I say, it was written in the stars Trump vs Putin: My Bets On Ceasefire.

Moving outside of Ukraine for now, the ICC condemned new sanctions that the US imposed on two if its judges and two prosecutors. It’s all about the charges against Netanyahu - AIPAC made sure that Israel’s interest is well covered by the US administration. However it is a funny twist of turns when America sanctions one of it’s global order institutions.

On the domestic front, Trump’s immigration policy continues to evolve. Last week we learned that Uganda agreed to accept migrants deported by Trump administration as long as they are not criminals, minors and preferably they are African. Uganda is already full of migrants from Sudan, maybe they see a chance for themselves to develop based on migrant work? We’ll see.

But immigration is not the only social issue that Trump battles. Now the National Guard troops in Washington DC began carrying guns in an attempt to crack down on crime. Trump also threatened to deploy the National Guard in Baltimore in a move that increasingly looks like being targeted at Democrat-run cities (which to be fair have higher share of crime on an average basis).

Moving to the central-south, a dram in Texas continues, where Republicans try to gerrymander the state to allow for up to 5 more districts to be won by Republicans in the upcoming midterms election. The Democrats first went out of the state to block the vote, then returned and now that the vote has passed, are planning to appeal it. Additionally, in California, they proceeded to do exactly the same thing to even out the chances.

That’s hardly it from the greatest country in the world. We also learned last week that an appeal court in New York overturned a civil fraud penalty of ca. $500 million against Donald Trump in the politically motivated case for business fraud around inflating asset values to secure better loan terms. Trump touted the decision as a great and total victory, but even with the penalty overturned, the actual charge remained.

We also saw some new documents from the Jeffrey Epstein case. In a move that surprised a lot of seasoned prediction market traders, the Trump administration released a transcript of an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell from July. In it she claims that the infamous client list doesn’t exist and that Trump never did anything wrong that she saw. Wonder why they released it… Anyway, at the same time we learned that a vocal accuser of Jeffrey Epstein, Virginia Giuffre, will publish a memoir this autumn. She is dead now and has supposedly requested that the memoir be published posthumously.

Lastly here, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, pleaded guilty to drug-trafficking charges in America. Shortly after Trump administration authorized military action abroad to counter drug trafficking, the infamous Sinaloa leader will join his friend El Chapo in an American high-security prison.

The Americas

Up north in Canada, Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, who lost an election earlier this year in a truly tragic way, has regained his seat in the parliament. A few months before the election, his party was projected to win, to ultimately lose to the incumbent and Pierre himself losing his seat.

Staying in the cold, Mark Carney, the current PM, promised more than C$1 billion ($723 million) in military aid to Ukraine during Independence Day celebrations in Kyiv. This war is far from over:

Now only the end of 2026 timeline has over 50% chances of a ceasefire. This Adjacent chart tells you all you need to know.

Asia

Moving to the far east, we have a big and consequential event coming in Thailand. In 3 days, on the 29th of August, the Constitutional Court will rule on the PM. The highly anticipated decision comes after she disrespected the army a few months back. You can read more about the case here.

Staying in the Southeast Asian paradise, amid the weakening tourism the country also moved to embrace crypto and allow foreign visitors to convert crypto to baht in a special wallet and use it to pay for goods and services in Thailand. Good news for me specifically and good news for crypto, as another country moves to embrace, rather than ban it. The crypto scheme will initially run as an 18-month pilot with conversions capped at 550,000 baht ($17,000). You can read more about it here.

Moving to Koreas, it was a busy week for South Korea. First it announced it hopes to improve relations with China in a visit to Beijing. Then Lee Jae-myung visited Washington and asked Trump to help establish peace in the peninsula. Trump said he would meet Kim Jong-un soon and Korea promised to buy $36 billion worth of Boeing planes. Overall it appears that South Korea is engaging in strategic ambiguity, trying to appease both Trump and China. Sooner or later though it will need to choose sides.

Lastly in Asia, almost 600,000 people were evacuated as Typhoon Kajiki made landfall in Vietnam. It is the most powerful storm this year in the country, expected to match last year’s Typhoon Yagi, the strongest storm in the South China Sea in three decades.

Middle East & Africa

Moving to the Middle East, there was a push to revive ceasefire talks this week with Hamas reportedly agreeing to a 60-days ceasefire in return for releasing half the hostages. However Netanyahu a week earlier claimed that Israel would only accept a deal if all hostages are released in one go.

So while Netanyahu agreed to begin negotiations with Hamas, it also begun its assault on Gaza City with many casualties. Pretty soon it turned out that in negotiations, Israel is now looking for a total surrender vs any limited ceasefire deals. I hate to be that guy, but I told you so. To put things into perspective, the UN-backed monitor has officially declared there is famine in Gaza City.

While Gaza is slowly, but surely, falling, I saw increased coverage about Iran vs Israel. After the 12-day war I was first to say that the conflict is far from over as Israel’s goals were not fulfilled. I also anticipated a quick resumption to the conflict as I expected Israel to use the advantage of hvaing destroyed much of Iran’s air defenses. However with Gaza being on the forefront and Iran already busy rebuilding its capabilities, it turns out I might have been a bit too eager betting here on Israel:

That being said I stand by my assessment, we should see new action, probably around the time Israel takes care of the current Gaza situation. It seems that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei agrees with me as he said last week the country’s standoff with America was unsolvable and vowed never to bow to American pressure (or Israeli for that matter). He also agreed to resume nuclear talks with Europe, but I think we all doubt that they will achieve anything.

Lastly, Yemen is still somewhere as it launched a ballistic missile on Israel and received a swift response in its capital. It’s hardly breaking news now, but the important bit of information here is that the missile might have contained cluster bombs, which would be a first for the group.

Europe

Moving to Europe, despite the ceasefire (or peace) talks failing, Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange 146 prisoners of war after mediation by UAE. A small win it is…

Meanwhile, a former Ukrainian military officer was arrested in Italy on suspicion of co-ordinating a team to explode and sabotage Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines in 2022. It is a first arrest in the case and considering that Ukraine alone lacks the capabilities to perform such attack, it looks like blame shifting rather than a real effort to catch the perpetrators.

I predicted that France will face another political crisis this year around the end of summer. And like clockwork, now François Bayrou, France’s PM, said he will hold a confidence vote next month over his plan to slash the budget. It was exactly the same situation that forced election last year, and this time the government has a minority so chances are not that great as opposition vowed to vote against the cuts.

That’s not the end for European news. Amid the tariff drama, postal services of Denmark, Germany, Italy and Sweden announced they were stopping accepting products destined for America. They blame the lack of clarity on new import duties. Additionally other postal services in Europe are expected to follow suit. Talking about the second order effect of tariffs…

Talking about Denmark, it will abolish VAT on books to encourage reading. As if taxes are the reason people don’t read, not TikTok slop inducing ADD. But they quoted an interesting statistic - nearly a quarter of Danish 15-year-olds have trouble understanding simple texts per OECD report. Kind of bearish for the long-form content I’m producing here as Denmark was ranked at the top of education quality reports for years. But at the same time it’s massively bullish for trading geopolitics related prediction markets. If you are here, you are already massively ahead!

Business, Finance & Economics

Moving to business, last week we had Jerome Powell speaking at Jackson Hole. In the speech, he for the first time indicated that he might be willing to cut. The market went wild and already almost fully priced in a 25bps cut in September, but if anyone listened to his whole speech, he definitely covered himself and was still saying that new data will decide the path. More in this week’s deep dive and if you want to listen to the speech yourself, here it is.

And as the September meeting is coming closer, Trump is once again ramping up pressure on the Fed to cut. After the failed attempt to pressure Powell directly, he focused now on Lisa Cook, who he first threatened to fire and proceeded to do so, reportedly for allegations of mortgage fraud. I’d say he’s trying to test the waters for firing Powell and I expect this to go badly. Lisa Cook said that Trump has no authority to fire her and that she will not resign. I will be following that one closely.

As I will follow the jobs report. Adjacent has a great chart on the jobs as well as published an article on the topic August Jobs Print.

After the revisions, traders are expecting another weak report, but unemployment on the below chart appears to be poised to remain fairly strong.

In strictly business, after the US announced an intention to take a 10% stake in Intel, SoftBank joined the ranks and agreed to invest $2 billion in Intel. The US stake will be covered by CHIPS grant conversion. While the talks are ongoing, the US government is not expected to gain a board seat. However this is a big development in what some call a move to “state capitalism”. It’s definitely a strong precedent that is bound to be used.

Lastly, OpenAI launched an India exclusive ChatGPT subscription priced at $4.60 per month in a move to induce an AI psychosis in a 1.5 billion people nation. The plan is supposed to give access to GPT-5 model, however I feel it will be neutered severly to justify the low price.

Tariffs

And finally in tariffs, the EU and the US are discussing new details of the trade deal, with the EU due to lower tariffs on American goods to secure a 15% tariff on cars, which is crucial for Germany, the largest EU economy.

And in the trade relations with Canada, after talking to Trump Mark Carney agreed to drop retaliatory tariffs on American goods covered by US-Mexico-Canada Agreement. However, 25% levy will remain in place on steel, cars and aluminum. I also suppose that the story is far from over as both countries failed to reach a trade deal by August 1st.

Wrap up

And that’s all for this week. It was an unusually long edition, but the sheer amount of news that I needed to cover made it impossible to be shorter.

So without another paragraph of words, stay strong and see you soon for the Fed deep dive!