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Between the end of September and the end of February, the US dollar depreciated by 6% in effective nominal terms and by 10% against the euro, trading at close to 1.07, a level not seen for almost a year. We explore what lies behind this change of trend and whether it is likely to continue.

Risk appetite recovers, following the spike in volatility at the beginning of April. However, the divergence between the central banks’ strategies is accentuated. Meanwhile, sovereign yields return, broadly speaking, to the levels of March and the stock markets recover some of the lost ground. Although the dollar is stabilising, it remains weak, and energy prices suffer due to the global uncertainty.

Undoubtedly, the negotiation of the next budget will once again test the health of the European project, on which our strategic autonomy needed to address the geopolitical challenges that will continue to come from abroad will depend.

Following a record-breaking 2022, the ECB’s interest rate hikes, coupled with the slower growth in real household disposable income, are expected to weaken the demand for housing.

The summer of 2025 – one of relative calm in the financial markets despite the volatility of the macroeconomic environment – has brought with it a change of gear between the Fed and the ECB. While France is emerging as a new source of instability, in the US sovereign rates are adjusting to monetary policy expectations, but they do not seem to fear institutional risk. The stock markets enjoy another month of gains, and among commodities, crude oil remains stable and gold reaches a new high. 

Although around 80% of Spanish exports to the United States are concentrated in five autonomous communities, no region is facing significant systemic risks. 

The strong start to the year introduces some upward bias into the growth forecasts for 2023. Nevertheless, the risk that the second half of the year could be weaker, as the aggressive rate hikes are finally transmitted to the economy, may limit the growth expected for 2024.

The financial markets broadly stabilised during the month of April, as investors' radar moved away from the financial turmoil of March to focus on the growth and inflation outlook, with the publication of GDP data for Q1 2023 and the corporate earnings season.

To date, the investments already approved as part of the Portuguese Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) amount to 12,249 million euros, compared to total planned investments of 16,644 million euros. This represents an approval rate of 74%, which in principle looks promising in terms of getting the most out of the NGEU funds that Portugal will receive up until 2026.

We analyse the European manufacturing industry’s import dependency on China and the United States and strategies to reduce it in a more fragmented geopolitical context.

In 2024, Spain’s real estate market enjoyed a remarkable recovery, with a significant increase in both house prices and sales. Factors such as the growth of gross disposable income, foreign demand and falling rates drove this trend. In this article, we unveil our forecasts for 2025 and explain why we expect this boom to continue.

The 2021 labour reform has managed to significantly reduce the temporary employment rate in Spain: from an average of 29.7% in the period 2014-2019, it has fallen to 12.7% in 2024. This reduction has occurred across the various sectors, age groups and regions, and it has led to greater employment stability, although job turnover has increased and the number of contracts registered has decreased.

With the major developed economies at the peak of a restrictive monetary policy cycle, we wonder how the US stock market has digested it.

The Spanish economy continues to have the highest structural unemployment rate in the European Union, despite having managed to reduce it substantially in recent years. To curb it, improvements are needed on three fronts: greater supply and demand for employment and better matching between the two.

We outline the five assumptions that must be met in order for the factors that are holding back economic growth to dissipate and for the outlook with which the year has begun to be confirmed.