Resources · Financial Theory & Economics
Financial Macroeconomics
Interactions between monetary policy, business cycles, interest rates and asset prices, and their impact on financial markets.
Module 1
Pourquoi la macro pour investir (mise en route)
Comprendre pourquoi l'économie pilote vos placements et de quoi est faite la macroéconomie financière.
- 1. What Is Financial Macroeconomics? When the Economy Meets the MarketsHow growth, inflation, rates and central banks move stocks, bonds and currencies — and why markets react to surprises, not to the numbers themselves.
- 2. Why an Investor Needs to Understand the Economy: The Starting IntuitionUnderstanding the economy is not about forecasting the next number: it is about knowing which world you invest in, seeing your risks and holding your nerve.
- 3. Microeconomics and Macroeconomics: The Difference, with Concrete ExamplesMicro and macro are not two sizes of the same object: what is true of one individual can be false of the whole. The fallacy of composition explained.
- 4. The Big Macro Variables That Move Your Investments: A PanoramaGrowth, inflation, rates, employment, the central bank, currencies and oil: the channel through which each macro variable moves the price of your assets.
- 5. The Essential Vocabulary of Financial Macroeconomics, Without the JargonBasis points, nominal and real, hawks and doves, an inverted curve, "priced in": the survival lexicon of financial macro, explained without jargon.
- 6. Where Do Macro Numbers Come From? Sources, Frequency and ReliabilityWho makes GDP, inflation and employment, out of what, and why these numbers are revised for years. Margins of error and the traps of reading them.
- 8. The Map of the Journey: From COVID to the Soft Landing (2020-2025)2020-2025: the COVID stop, the stimulus, 9% inflation, the fastest tightening since Volcker, the disinflation and the soft landing.
- 7. Module 1 in Practice: Building Your Macro Monitoring RoutineFifteen minutes a day, an hour at the weekend, one review a month: how to follow macro without drowning in it — and what to ignore.
Module 2
Activité, croissance et richesse (le PIB)
Mesurer la croissance et relier le potentiel de l'économie à vos rendements de long terme.
- 9. Understanding GDP: The Measure of the Wealth a Country ProducesValue added, three approaches, C + I + G + (X − M), reading a quarterly release, cross-country comparisons and the blind spots of GDP.
- 10. Real GDP and Nominal GDP: Why Correct for InflationNominal GDP, real GDP, the deflator: how to separate volumes from prices — and why a number that rises can hide a recession, as it did in 1974.
- 11. Economic Growth and What It Is Worth to Your Long-Term ReturnsWhere equity returns actually come from, why growth dilutes, and why the fastest-growing countries have not enriched their shareholders.
- 12. Productivity and Long-Run Growth: The Variable That Decides EverythingOutput per hour, multiplied by 5.2 since 1947: the two engines of productivity, its waves, its slowdown — and who reaps the gains.
- 13. AI, Automation and Productivity: A New Engine of Growth?US productivity really has accelerated since 2022. But attributing it to AI does not survive the data — on growth or on employment.
- 14. Demography and Growth: How Population Shapes the EconomyGrowth = working-age population + productivity. Japan did not stagnate, it shrank — and the demographic dividend is never automatic.
- 15. Potential Growth and the Output Gap: The Map No One Can MeasurePotential GDP and the output gap: two numbers central banks track, nobody can really measure, and whose revisions are as large as themselves.
- 16. Saving and Investment: The Two Engines Financing the EconomyS = I is an accounting identity, not a law. The saving glut of the rich, the fall of the natural rate, and why Europe invests in bricks.
- 17. Climate and Macroeconomics: Physical Risk, Transition and Potential GrowthPhysical, transition and liability risk: climate as a hard macro variable — and why estimates of its cost vary by a factor of ten.
- 18. Data Workshop: Discovering FRED, the Federal Reserve's WarehouseA workshop: searching, reading, transforming and exporting an economic series on FRED, the St. Louis Fed's database — and its six classic traps.
- 19. Your First Python Script: Load a FRED Series and Plot It in Ten LinesA workshop: load a FRED series and plot it in ten lines of Python, with nothing to install — including the trap that breaks every pre-2025 tutorial.
- 20. Growth Already Anticipated: Why It's Often Already in the PriceThe BRICs delivered their promised growth; the fund that sold the story lost about 21% over five years while its assets under management fell 88% from their peak. Why predictable growth is already in the price.
Module 3
La monnaie et sa création
Comprendre comment l'argent est créé et pourquoi la quantité de monnaie compte pour les prix et les marchés.
- 21. What Is Money? Origins and FunctionsIts three functions, its plural origins, the two-tier system: what money really is — and how to judge crypto, stablecoins and CBDCs.
- 22. The Role of Commercial Banks in Credit CreationHow a bank creates a deposit by making a loan, why repayment destroys it, and the four brakes that bound money creation.
- 23. Money Creation: How Money Appears in the EconomyBank credit, QE, deficits, foreign currency: the doors through which money appears in the economy — and those through which it disappears.
- 24. Money Multiplier or Endogenous Creation: Do Banks Lend Out Deposits, or Create Money by Lending?Do banks lend out deposits, or create money by lending? The money multiplier on trial, and what is left of it after 2008.
- 25. Money Supply M1, M2: What These Aggregates Really MeasureM1, M2, M3: what each aggregate contains, why a savings account is money and a share is not, and why those borders move with the rules.
- 26. The Quantity Theory of Money (MV = PQ): Linking Money, Prices and ActivityMV = PQ: an identity always true that predicts nothing on its own. When money governs prices, when it stays silent — and velocity's decisive role.