Special Analysis

Some briefings close with a longer note on the mechanism behind one of the day's major moves. They are collected here, newest first.

Oracle's $664bn Backlog and What It Is Not

Friday, 11 September 2026

Oracle's $664bn remaining performance obligation is the number that put the AI trade back on the front foot today, but it is a sum of multi-year promises from a handful of loss-making AI labs, not revenue, and…

The S&P 500's Entire 27 August Gain Came From Three Stocks

Thursday, 27 August 2026

The S&P 500 rose 0.72% on 27 August, and Nvidia, CrowdStrike and Salesforce, together 8.2% of the index by weight, contributed 0.79 percentage points of that, which means the other 502 companies were collectively…

How the Ifo Business Climate Index Works, and Where It Fails

Tuesday, 25 August 2026

The Ifo index that drove today's German cyclical bid is a monthly survey of roughly 9,000 firms, and its reliability rests not on the sample resembling the German economy but on its being a stable panel asked…

Why a Treasury Buyback Announcement Rallied the Long End 9 bp

Wednesday, 19 August 2026

A buyback swaps one liability for another and leaves total debt outstanding unchanged, so on the face of it there was nothing in Wednesday's announcement for the bond market to celebrate.

The 30-Year Treasury at Its Highest Since 2007

Tuesday, 18 August 2026

This section is triggered by the 30-year Treasury yield touching 5.34% on 17 August — its highest level since July 2007 — before settling at 5.28% on 18 August.

What Explains the CAC 40 at an All-Time High

Thursday, 6 August 2026

The record has very little to do with France, and quite a lot to do with what the index is made of.