Optimism in AI drove up Taiwan's stock market in the first half of 2024, making it the top performing market in Asia-Pacific so far this year.
The potential and scale of the AI investment cycle continues to drive economic activity globally, he said, adding that the impact of AI investments are broadening out to sectors such as industrials, materials and utilities.Americans and Japanese take far less time off — but Europeans say they're more ‘vacation deprived'
Powell said Japan's macroeconomic backdrop is favorable for risk assets."We remain overweight Japanese equities, driven by strong corporate reform momentum, healthy earnings and the valuation support from still-negative real interest rates." The central bank, however, has penciled in a more aggressive path to tightening monetary policy in 2025, increasing its forecast to four cuts of 25 basis points each.that the U.S. central bank will cut interest rates once this year, but will wait until December to do it.
However, he predicted that the central bank will enact fewer cuts in 2025 than the dot plot suggests, calling the 2025 outlook"murkier" than this year.