The charts that matter: watching for the canary in the coalmine

Inflation is likely to be the big issue of the year. Here, John Stepek looks at how the global economy is faring with the charts that matter.

Welcome to your weekend edition, where we take a look through the charts that matter and catch up on anything else that we missed during the week.

But first, for podcast fans you'll (hopefully) be glad to know that the MoneyWeek podcast is finally back! Yesterday, Merryn and I recorded our first podcast of 2018 - and the first in a very long time indeed and you can listen to it here (alternatively, download it via your favoured podcast provider). I can't promise you high production values or consummate professionalism, but hopefully it gives an insight into our thought processes...

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.