The blue bond market, a niche yet rapidly evolving segment of sustainable finance, is gaining momentum as investors and issuers recognize the critical importance of ocean conservation and sustainable water management. While it is still a much smaller market than the green bond market, blue bonds are advancing, driven by innovative financial instruments. A snapshot of the blue ...

The book The Mandibles is a speculative fiction novel by Lionel Shriver that presents a dystopian vision of America in the mid-21st century, following a major economic collapse. Although the book was first published in 2016, I only read it a couple of years later after a friend recommended it to me. Given what is happening in Los Angeles today, the book came back to mind, the p ...

This week, the ECB published an interesting report on the international role of the euro. The main finding was that the role of the euro has remained fairly stable in the international monetary system over the past few years, especially in international payments and in the issuance of foreign loans and debt. The report also highlights the rise of the Renminbi in global trade fi ...

Over the past two weeks, neither the economic data flow nor financial markets have offered your economist much respite. The S&P 500 has managed to recover most of its earlier 2025 losses (in USD terms), yet this rebound has not been accompanied by a corresponding recovery in corporate earnings expectations. As a result, valuations for U.S. equities have rebounded quickly, p ...

This week, the IEA revealed its 2025 World Energy Investment report[1], which brought striking news: global energy investment will reach $3.3 trillion this year, with $2.2 trillion flowing to clean energy. That’s nearly double the amount going to fossil fuels, a milestone we anticipated in our September 2024 article[2], when clean investment first overtook fossil fuels globally ...

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) has gone from a niche fintech widget to a full-blown cultural shift in how people transact. It’s in your checkout. It’s in your browser. You can now even BNPL at restaurants like Chipotle. Lunch now, pay later. Digest both slowly… And on the surface? It sounds great. No fees, no interest, no friction. Just smooth, clean consumption. But here’s the thi ...

Shares of American company Royal Caribbean Cruises were one of the better performing on the US stock market over the past week. They gained some 6% against some 1.9% for the broad market index S&P 500.   Royal Caribbean Group (RCG) is a cruise holding company that operates a global fleet of 67 ships that travel the world. It is the number two in its industry behind Carniv ...

At Ortelius, we recently had the pleasure of joining the panel at the avant-premiere of Peter Tom Jones’s new documentary Europe’s Lithium Paradox. It’s a compelling exploration of a strange contradiction: Europe has the lithium it needs for its clean energy transition, and yet, we’re still stuck on foreign dependencies. Why? One answer stood out loud and clear: social resista ...

Let’s start with a moment we all shared last week, a moment that resonated deeply here in Belgium. The final goodbye of Kevin De Bruyne from Manchester City. It wasn’t just a farewell to a football legend; it was a powerful image of legacy.   Kevin, once again, brought his children onto the pitch, sharing that emotional moment with the next generation. And behind his incredib ...

Our Fiery Flash of the week is Wolfspeed. The stock plunged nearly 80%, hitting an intraday low of $0.83 on Wednesday. It then staged a remarkable rebound, surging 130% to hover around $1.91 by the morning of May 23, 2025. Even so, the stock is still down roughly 50% over the past five days. If that isn’t Fiery Flash material, what is? This dramatic collapse comes amid reports ...