Europe’s vulnerability to the gas market has changed in recent years. Whilst its reliance on imports has remained stable, its gas supply has been more vulnerable to global market conditions since 2022, due to a shift in the composition of its imports. Furthermore, in 2026, the combination of high geopolitical risk in one of the main production regions and the pressure of climate change on European consumers has created an unprecedented situation, leading to price pressures and significant uncertainty regarding the short-term outlook. Even if they ease, tensions in the European gas market could persist beyond the winter, largely due to the need to refill inventories.
The week was dominated by large market swings triggered by the US midterms results. In the end, energy prices end the week much lower, bond yields somewhat lower and stock prices down in tech-heavy markets and slightly up elsewhere, notably in Europe. Market pressure on France eased somewhat.
When we talk about tokenised finance, we think of blockchain. More broadly, we refer to DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) : a digital ledger shared amongst several participants and secured by cryptography, of which blockchain is the best-known form. Once validated, an entry becomes virtually unalterable, making transactions traceable. A digital token represents an asset or a right (bond, share, monetary claim) and circulates within this ledger.The novelty does not lie in digitisation: finance is already largely digital, but compartmentalised into ledgers specific to each participant.
Equity indices, currencies, commodities, bond markets. A deep selloff in tech stocks entered a third consecutive week, taking the Nasdaq down by 10% since its last peak. Europe outperformed and bonds rallied on investor demand for safety. The bund OAT spread is back to 164, however.
Eurozone growth continues to prove resilient, notwithstanding the volatility of the Irish figures. The Q3 data reinforce our forecast of 1.1% growth this year, which could even be slightly exceeded, as German and Spanish momentum shows no sign of fading. In France, the negative surprise (-0.1% q/q against a consensus of +0.1% q/q) stems from a new one-off factor (the sharp fall in aerospace output caused by delays in input deliveries) and masks an encouraging rebound in household consumption. In the United States, growth reached its highest level since Q2 2025 (0.8% q/q), driven by buoyant private domestic demand.
The private credit market raises many questions, and its lack of transparency is not helping. Official public data remain scarce. The available estimates come mainly from private sources, whose methodologies vary widely. The Financial Accounts of the Federal Reserve (Fed) now shed new light on the matter. They reveal that private credit finances 7.1% of US corporate debt through households (31% of funds’ total financing), insurers and pension funds (20%), and banks (19%).
At a time when Chinese consumption is slowing significantly, could India become a driver of global consumption? For now, this prospect presents considerable difficulties, with many obstacles to overcome. Despite dynamic growth and the Indian economy’s expanding share of global output (8.2% of worldwide GDP in 2025), the middle-class consumer population remains modest and is nowhere near the size of China’s. This is due to the concentration of employment in low-value-added and largely informal sectors
Equity indices, currencies, commodities, bond markets.
Growth looks to have held up in Q3 despite successive shocks, as it did in 2025 and H1 2026. A longer Middle East conflict has fed into more persistent inflation; drought has worsened in many countries, and interest rates have risen further – at the short end, with both the ECB and the Fed raising policy rates in September, and even more at the long end. However, our nowcasts show that growth is bending without breaking in most advanced economies.
The global economy’s unexpected resilience might have invited the self-congratulation that is a trademark of international official meetings. But policymakers gathered in Bangkok for the 2026 IMF Annual Meetings were wearily aware that “continued resilience cannot be taken for granted”, as noted in the prologue to the closing Chair’s Statement to the International Monetary and Financial Committee meeting. Growth forecasts remain in line with those made a year ago, when interest rates were much lower and no energy shock was in the cards, and even with those made in April, when a short shock was the base case
The September PMI surveys confirm that growth in the Eurozone is getting stronger, boosted in particular by new export orders, which are still rising. Sectors that were already performing well – technology and capital goods (including for defence) – are continuing to grow, while those that had been struggling until now – aeronautics, consumer goods and financial services – are seeing their production indices recover. This strong performance is particularly noteworthy, given that it has not yet been undermined by higher inflation.
The average CPI inflation rate across the fifteen leading emerging economies stabilised at 4.3% year-on-year in August. The inflationary impact remains weaker than in 2022, due in particular to reduced spillover effects on agricultural and food prices. Manufacturers’ views on the trend in input and finished product prices have returned to their pre-conflict levels.
Economic and financial forecasts as of September 2026.
A pillar of the NextGenerationEU programme, the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) will expire on December 31, 2026. As of the end of August 2026, slightly more than three-quarters of the total budget had been disbursed (EUR 440 billion out of EUR 573 billion). Disbursing the remaining quarter (EUR 133 billion) by the end of the year will require a significant increase compared with the historical pace (EUR 90 billion per year). The goal of channeling these funds toward productive investment appears to have been achieved.
Six months have passed since the start of America’s and Israel’s military intervention in Iran and Lebanon. What picture is emerging around the impact of this external shock on the financing conditions of the major emerging economies and on exchange rate movements? And what parallels can be drawn with the 2022 energy shock?
