What next for the world economy?

Trumpists protesting against wearing masks — The surge in cases in the US is the main threat to global growth © Getty

(Image credit: © Karen Ducey/Getty Images)

There is little consensus about which way the economy is heading as we embark on the second half of the year, says Lisa Beilfuss for Barron’s. Analysts have spent the last few months arguing over whether we are poised for a “V”, “U” or “W-shaped” recovery. More inventive types talk of “a Nike swoosh” and “a reverse square-root sign”.

Major global economies have been recovering from lockdowns more quickly than expected, says Jonathan Allum in The Blah! newsletter. US employment remains in a hole, but news that a better-than-expected 4.8 million jobs returned in June suggests that things are on the way back to normal. Not to overdo the “horticultural metaphors”, but we have our “green shoots”, the question now is whether they will manage to grow into “fully fledged plants”.

The surge in coronavirus cases in southern US states is the biggest threat. The epidemic still “has a long way to go”, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC; “we are now in the second wave”. Improvements in US retail traffic have gone into reverse. Authorities in affected states have once again closed businesses. The virus surge has put a “cloud” over the third quarter, says Mohamed El-Erian on Bloomberg. Another round of slumping activity will mean more downgrades to earnings forecasts.

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Daily life has changed radically in the last six months, but markets feel strangely familiar, says Jon Sindreu in The Wall Street Journal. Tech continues to beat out value stocks and large companies continue to gain at the expense of smaller ones.

And as MoneyWeek regularly points out, central banks continue to step in with ever more lavish monetary support whenever investors throw a tantrum. As Sindreu puts it, “the more markets change, the more they stay

the same”.

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Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019.

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere.

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful.

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.