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Protecting your money in today's unpredictable market

“When things are going fine, nobody really tests the skills and talents of their financial advisor, but this is a moment where really good advice can be extraordinarily powerful,” says Margaret Franklin, CFA Institute's CEO and President.

In conversation with GZERO’s Tony Maciulis, Franklin describes the current financial climate as “maximum uncertainty,” rating it a 10 out of 10 on the risk scale. Recent unpredictable US trade policies have sent market volatility soaring, leaving many people and investors uncertain about their financial and portfolio management decisions. The usual conditions of predictability and reliability have been upended, making it more important than ever to seek guidance from a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Franklin recommends. She warns that the most “common destructive behavior” for a portfolio is abandoning a sensible program just when you need to stay the course.

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President Donald Trump at a bilateral meeting with China's President Xi Jinping during the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 29, 2019.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Trump promises to be “very nice” with China – but Beijing won’t be flattered

On Wednesday, Donald Trump said he would deliver a “fair deal” with China. He also said he’d be “very nice” to the country after meeting with major retailers. CNN reports the retailers gave the president a “blunt message” about the risks of a prolonged trade war with China, warning shop shelves could “soon be empty.”

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Workers' Party (WP) supporters wave party flags as they cheer their candidates at the nomination center ahead of the general election in Singapore, on April 23, 2025.

Photo by Suhaimi Abdullah/NurPhoto via Reuters

Singapore’s opposition hopes to make major gains as election campaign begins

Singapore kicked off a lightning-fast, nine-day campaign on Wednesday for its May 3 election. The vote promises to be the most contested since independence, as the ruling People’s Action Party sweats a strong challenge amid weak economic forecasts.

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Jess Frampton

Trump’s 4D checkers, China’s opportunity, climate hopes, and more: Your questions, answered

Welcome to another edition of my mailbag, where I attempt to make sense of our increasingly chaotic world, one reader question at a time. If you have a burning question for me before I go back to full-length columns, ask it here and I’ll answer as many as I can in next week’s newsletter.

Let’s dive in (with questions lightly edited for clarity).

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Global economic outlook: Is a recession already here?

“We’re heading toward a substantial U.S. recession,” said Robert Kahn, Eurasia Group’s Managing Director, Global Macro. “We may even be in one now.”

That notion challenges the official economic outlook released this week by the International Monetary Fund, which was more cautious in its assessment. However, it more closely mirrors what experts are saying in the halls at the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings currently underway in Washington, D.C.

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Containers on a cargo ship are seen at an industrial port in Tokyo, Japan April 3, 2025.

REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

Beijing tries to woo an uninterested Tokyo over joint tariff fight

Chinese Premiere Li Qiang sent Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba a letter asking that they “fight protectionism together,” according to local reports Tuesday, as both countries face potentially disastrous US tariffs.

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Paige Fusco & Ari Winkleman / GZERO Media

The Graphic Truth: The foreigners who hold US debt

The US is the world’s biggest debtor, with more than $35 trillion of securities outstanding.

About a quarter of that is held by foreign investors, a detail which has drawn considerable attention since Donald Trump began walloping the world with tariffs to rebalance US trade ties and military alliances. That’s because if countries upset – or merely uneasy – about Trump’s policies sell those securities in response, the debt servicing costs for the US rise. This is no small matter on $35 trillion worth of paper.

In fact, one widely held explanation for Trump’s abrupt suspension of the “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 9 was that wary bond investors had begun to sell US Treasuries: In the week of April 11, yields on 10-year US treasuries saw their biggest leap in a quarter of a century, a sign that creditors were dropping US sovereign debt fast.

Could countries weaponize US debt more directly? China, Trump’s biggest trade war target, is the second largest foreign US creditor, officially holding more than $750 billion.

A selloff could be devastating. But analysts say it would be hard to find enough buyers for a sale that is both swift and large enough to catch the US off guard.

And even if it were possible, a seller would risk their own financial security as well global economic health by kneecapping the US. In other words: It would be, in financial terms, the nuclear option.

The graphic above looks at which countries hold the most US sovereign debt. Note that the last official data precede “Liberation Day” and that they depend on official reporting. Some countries may hold more than what is listed here via third parties.

Burkina Faso’s junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore attends the first ordinary summit of heads of state and governments of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Niamey, Niger, on July 6, 2024.

REUTERS/Mahamadou Hamidou

Hard Numbers: Burkina Faso foils coup effort, Trump dents democracy rating, Spain to hit defense-spending target, Musk to reduce his DOGE hours, Migrants arrested while fleeing US, Japan rids foreign debt, Tourists killed in Kashmir

40%: Burkina Faso’s ruling military recently foiled an attempted coup aimed at removing junta leader Cap. Ibrahim Traoré, the country’s security minister said on Monday. The Sahel nation has had to deal with widespread insurgency in recent years, with rebel jihadist groups reportedly controlling around 40% of the country’s land mass.

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