Single Best Idea: Jordan Rochester on De-Dollarization & Sharon Miller on Small Business Resilience

Economic Uncertainty and Key Trends

• 🗓️ The first day of June marked the start of the final month of Q2, with a pervasive sense of uncertainty in the air and on the ground.
• 🔍 While the immediate news can be noisy, big trades like de-dollarization are happening in the background and are crucial to identify.

De-Dollarization and European Growth

• 🇺🇸 The focus on short-term political events, such as tariffs, can obscure larger structural shifts like de-dollarization.
• 🇪🇺 European defense spending is increasing, with significant announcements from the UK regarding submarines, signaling a potential structural improvement in European growth expectations.
• ⚠️ Event risks loom for the summer, particularly around upcoming G7, NATO, and EU defense summits, with concerns about a potential failure to reach a deal before the July 9th cutoff for reciprocal tariffs, which could lead the ECB to cut rates in July.

Resilience of American Small Business

• 📊 Sharon Miller from Bank of America highlights the resilience of small business clients over the past eight years, having navigated crises like COVID.
• 📈 While regional variations exist, with the Northeast faring less well than the South, the overall health of American businesses is strong.
• 🗣️ Miller emphasizes looking at data versus anecdotal evidence to understand the true state of businesses across different regions and industries.