The US-China Tech Cold War remains one of the biggest tail risks of the current market rally. We have conducted a top-down analysis to quantify the impact of a complete decoupling. Our study on stock price correlations with the DB Tech Cold War Index yields a surprising and counter-intuitive finding, Semiconductors. Listen to a new podcast with Apjit Walia Tech Strategist and Matthew Barnard, Head of Company Research US.

Children, interruptions, loneliness, and an unsuitable workplace has left many frustrated as they attempt to work from home. We do the sums to see if businesses should subsidise their employees’ housing costs so they can save on expensive office space.

We are going through a tremendous volatile market with investors looking for stable returns. According to a few news outlets some of the quant funds have performed less well. Caio Natividade, Head of QIS Research and Sorin Ionescu, Head of QIS Structuring share their insights on common misconceptions.

A confluence of factors - a pandemic, high education costs, environmental concerns, and new instructional technology - could rapidly increase the popularity of online education. Moreover, because online platforms transcend political boundaries, top universities could gain more market share on a global level, leading to the disappearance of many lesser-known schools.

The unique nature of the pandemic shock and the wide uncertainty surrounding it, meant there was no one historical playbook that fit easily. So inevitably there were going to be some surprises. In the event, there have been many.

Machine learning, with all of their processing power, they’re able to more quickly highlight or find patterns in big data that would have otherwise been missed by human beings. Machine learning is a tool that can be used to enhance humans’ abilities to solve problems and make informed inferences on a wide range of problems, much wider than financial services for example helping diagnose diseases to coming up with solutions for global climate change.

Online food ordering (both grocery delivery and meal kits) was already seeing steady growth before covid-19. Since the outbreak, it has taken off. While some people may revert back to their old habits when the pandemic recedes, many have been introduced to the concept and will continue to enjoy the benefits.

While history shows us that it can take over two years for an aviation demand shock to return to normal, many people now forecast a permanent drop in travel, particularly for business. We argue business and personal travel will remain, however, the way people book will change the transport industry.

With European football leagues on hold, clubs are facing severe losses that will likely continue over into next season. The transfer market has also been highly disrupted. Not all clubs have shareholders with deep pockets and so there is likely to be a widening of inequality between the big and small clubs.

One of the lead features in the latest Konzept edition concerns whether the Coronavirus will end up being deflationary or inflationary. We have Robin Winkler, FX Strategist in the red corner fighting for his deflationary views and Oliver Harvey, Macro Strategist in the blue corner countering with his inflationary views. Jim Reid, Global Head of Fundamental Credit Strategy and Thematic Research moderates.