Daily Commentary

MarketMinder’s View: Please note MarketMinder doesn’t make individual security recommendations, and the firms mentioned here are coincident to a couple themes we wish to highlight. As this article lays out, Singapore—a shipping hub linking China with the West and an international finance center—would theoretically appear especially vulnerable to major trade disruptions (e.g., tariffs). So it may seem counterintuitive that the city-state’s markets fared so well last year: “The country’s stock market had its best year for a decade in 2025, with a total return of 28.6 per cent, while foreign investors rushed to buy its banks’ bonds, a safety-first asset class favoured primarily by domestic buyers.” The article cites Singapore’s predictable political backdrop and reforms to boost domestic listings as reasons for international investors’ interest in the city’s markets. Those probably play some role, though we think a broader force is at play: The disruptions to global trade last year weren’t as severe as feared, and that positive relief buoyed non-US markets, with Singapore’s status as a free-trade bastion perhaps boosting sentiment there especially. Singapore’s market performance last year also illustrates another underappreciated theme: The global bull market isn’t just about tech. “While much of the momentum across Asia’s equity markets came from a rush to invest in AI-related businesses, Singapore’s biggest risers were steadier businesses such as banks and property companies.” Now, 2025’s returns won’t predict 2026’s, and Singapore’s market is tiny in the global scheme of things. But its resilience is a microcosm of why non-US markets look likely to continue leading this bull market. Moreover, as the conclusion alludes to, despite Singapore’s resilience last year, many worry about a growth slowdown and the possibility of resurgent global inflation—false fears that add bricks to the wall of worry bull markets climb.

MarketMinder’s View: Irish GDP climbed by 12.6% last year, its fastest expansion since 2021, thanks to strong pharmaceutical exports to the US—one of the best rates in the world. “Although many countries have yet to report full-year growth figures, estimates and forecasts from the International Monetary Fund indicate that Ireland outpaced other advanced economies by some distance, and left it trailing only South Sudan and Libya, two countries that were recovering from conflict. Ireland was not alone in benefiting from a surge in exports to the U.S. in the early months of the year as businesses tried to get ahead of an anticipated hike in tariffs. But it has also received a boost from an ongoing rise in U.S. demand for peptide-based hormones used in popular weight-loss drugs.” Now, the article casts this as whopping evidence of Ireland’s tariff resilience, but when you look at the quarterly data, the vast majority of this surge came in Q1 as businesses front-ran tariffs. GDP fell in Q3 and Q4, with the Central Statistics Office pinning the decline on “the multinational dominated sector of Industry.” It looks to us like skew from tariffs is still ironing out. But there are still some encouraging nuggets, like this: “There are few signs as yet that Ireland has lost its appeal to U.S. and other overseas investors. IDA Ireland, the agency responsible for attracting and keeping foreign businesses, reported a record number of new investments in 2025 with 323 in total, a 38% increase on 2024.” But to see how all of this actually affects Irish domestic activity, we will all have to wait for the release of Modified Domestic Demand, a bespoke Irish stat that strips out multinationals. The annual GDP figure makes for a fun and flashy headline, but it indicates next to nothing about the actual Irish economy’s health.

MarketMinder’s View: While the White House and Senate are racing toward a deal to pass at least five of the six spending bills necessary to avoid a partial government shutdown by Friday’s end, it remains on the table for now. Should one occur, there could be some downstream effects worth being aware of. After a hefty dose of politics at the outset of this piece (which leads us to remind you we are politically agnostic, focusing only on policies’ potential economic and market implications, and we leave party, personality and general sociology out of it), this article focuses on one potential effect people may have to deal with: IRS headaches. The agency’s funding is set to run out midnight Friday, meaning employees would be furloughed or have to work without pay (the agency hasn’t released a fresh contingency plan). That could affect taxpayers, as filing season opened earlier this week. “The impact on how quickly refunds would be processed isn’t clear. The agency claims to issue refunds to most taxpayers within 21 days of filing. Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union, a nonprofit advocacy group, said he expects the IRS to maintain that standard even with the disruption of a shutdown. But refunds are likely to be issued on the ‘outer edge’ of the 21-day range, Sepp said.” As the article also notes, taxpayers who want to talk to a human at the IRS may be waiting a while given already strained staffing issues—a shutdown probably wouldn’t help on that front. So for those who like to file their taxes early, it may be worth preparing for a possible government closure and set your expectations accordingly.