FICC

Special Report

The Hormuz crisis has exposed a structural vulnerability in China's petrochemical value chain. Going forward, Beijing will look to build greater supply security by scaling up coal-to-olefins capacity — a shift that creates a structural tailwind for coal prices and a structural headwind for oil.

Goldilocks, with fault lines underneath. Our first joint FICC outlook lays out where growth, inflation, and policy are headed this quarter and where the calm could crack.

Special Report

China holds a structural advantage in this "Age of Electricity" by operating the world's largest electricity system. However, this advantage has inherent limits, and the US remains competitive despite its challenges.

Special Report

The risk of a “super El Niño” represents a meaningful threat to agricultural markets. Wheat, cocoa, and palm oil appear particularly vulnerable to El Niño-related supply disruptions. A rise in food prices could also generate political — and potentially geopolitical — reverberations across frontier and emerging markets, where food prices are far more relevant than in developed economies.

Copper prices are surging again after a brief pullback in the first quarter. What is driving the renewed strength, and can it persist?

Hopes for an imminent Middle East de-escalation have capped oil prices in recent weeks, but that restraint may soon fade.

The UAE’s exit from OPEC is unlikely to impact oil markets in 2026. Over the longer term, however, the emergence of an “anti-OPEC club” of producers favoring unconstrained oil output growth would create a headwind to crude prices and weaken the price floor that OPEC seeks to defend.

The Iran war has damaged LNG production capacity and halted tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz. We assess the conflict's impact on LNG markets over cyclical and structural horizons.

Special Report

Uranium’s bull market remains intact, supported by structural supply deficits, rising nuclear demand, and tightening fuel-cycle constraints. The Iran war reinforces energy security concerns while disrupting key inputs like sulfur, exacerbating supply risks. With contracting strengthening and policy support accelerating, uranium is re-emerging as a strategic commodity with durable upside.

In this report, we deviate from our base case and instead assume that there is an immediate improvement in Hormuz traffic. This exercise allows us to explore how the global oil supply shortfall could eventually be offset if the right conditions are in place.