There was a brief period earlier this year when US shares gave up the leadership crown to commodities, but American stocks have retaken the performance throne in June, based on a set of ETFs through Friday’s close (June 21).

Vanguard Total US Stock Market ETF (VTI) closed last week with a strong 13.5% year-to-date gain. In close pursuit in the number-two slot: commodities (GCC), which had been leading in 2024 back in April and early May.

Stocks ex-US are well behind their US counterparts, but respectable gains in offshore shares are still conspicuous this year. Equities in emerging markets (VWO) have rebounded and are currently posting a third-place win in 2024 of 7.5%. Shares in developed markets ex-US (VEA) are in fourth place with a 4.0% year-to-date increase.

US bonds have recovered over the past two months but have yet to post a meaningful year-to-date gain. Vanguard Total Bond Market (BND) is essentially flat in 2024.

There are plenty of losers elsewhere in global markets, including property shares and foreign bonds. The biggest decline is currently found in developed-market government bonds ex-US (BWX), which is in the hole by 6.2%.

Notably, a forecast-free, passive measure of holding all the world’s markets in market-value weights continues to generate solid results this year. This unmanaged benchmark holds all the major asset classes (except cash) in market-value weights via ETFs and represents a competitive measure for multi-asset-class-portfolio strategies. GMI is currently up 9.7% in 2024, outperforming all its components except two: US stocks and commodities.

● What Went Wrong with Capitalism
Ruchir Sharma
Essay by author via Financial Times
Many observers think the era of easy money ended with the recent return of inflation, because it forced central banks to raise interest rates. But this era was not defined only by low rates and did not begin only in 2008; it encompasses the suite of habits — borrow, bail out, regulate, stimulate — that have been building for a century. It is not over until old habits change.

● How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain
Peter S. Goodman
Review via The Wall Street Journal
In “How the World Ran Out of Everything,” a colorful and very readable look at how the Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc with supply chains, Peter S. Goodman makes clear that he doesn’t think much of outsourcing, offshoring and just-in-time manufacturing. He contends that the late deliveries and barren retail shelves of 2021 and 2022 were the consequence of a yearslong effort to cut costs and boost profits by shifting production overseas. “The executives of publicly traded corporations and their hired enablers in the political sphere have played make-believe with the world economy,” he writes. As he describes the situation, the past few decades of globalization, at least insofar as manufacturing is concerned, were pretty much a mistake.

● The Trolls of Wall Street: How the Outcasts and Insurgents Are Hacking the Markets
Nathaniel Popper
Review via Financial Times
“Meme stock” mania peaked in 2021, when amateur traders, geeing each other up online, jacked up the price of stocks like GameStop and AMC. In his readable, propulsive history of WallStreetBets — the Reddit forum at the heart of the stock-trading craze — Nathaniel Popper argues that the effects of that mania are still being felt.
Popper recounts the history of the forum — founded in 2012 — in detail. His excellent access to chat logs and historical Reddit comments give an inside perspective on the long rise preceding the forum’s mainstream notoriety. Nonetheless, the book hits its straps in the chapters devoted to trading in GameStop shares, whose whiplash price moves dented hedge funds, kinked financial plumbing and made amateur trading front-page news.

● Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World
Paolo Zannoni
Review via Publishers Weekly
Zannoni, the executive vice-chairman of Prada’s board of directors, debuts with an edifying examination of how debt has shaped banking throughout history. Arguing that “the true nature of modern money…

If the Bank of England’s decision on Thursday to leave interest rates unchanged is a guide, the outlook for the start date for a US rate cut may be further down the line than generally assumed.

There are many differences between the UK and US economy and so sizing up BoE policy decisions with the Federal Reserve is an apples and oranges comparison on several fronts. Yet it’s hard to overlook the fact that the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street left its target rate unchanged, at 5.25% on Thursday (June 20), despite a return of UK inflation to the central bank’s 2% target in May, reported the day before.

It’s also striking that UK inflation is well below the equivalent for the US. Naively extrapolating the difference as a guide to the future suggests that the Fed’s rate cut is nowhere on the near-term horizon – a guesstimate that contrasts with market expectations in the US.

But England isn’t America and the crowd evaluates the macro outlook quite differently for the US, and rightly so. Nonetheless, there’s still room for debate on guesstimates on timing for the first Fed rate cut. Fed funds futures are currently estimating an implied 66% probability that the Sep. 18 FOMC meeting will mark the first announcement of policy easing. The obvious caveat: US investors have been pricing in moderate odds for rate cuts for much of the past year, only to be disabused of that forecast, time and time again.

Is this time different? No one knows, but the BoE’s decision surely offers another reason to stay cautious on expecting US rate cuts will arrive sooner rather than later. Indeed, despite a clear sign that UK inflation has returned to target, the central bank remains reluctant to embrace a dovish pivot.

“It’s good news that inflation has returned to our 2 per cent target,” notes Andrew Bailey, BoE’s governor. “We need to be sure that inflation will stay low and that’s why we’ve decided to hold rates at 5.25 per cent for now.”

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By James Picerno

The key question: Will the Fed be similarly cautious? At least one voting member of the FOMC is leaning in that direction. Thomas Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, told