Category: 3. Business

New Delhi: Pakistan is going all out on crypto, and it’s not merely an economic step but also a deeply political one in which the country’s military and intelligence seem involved too.

A day after he was elevated as the country’s most powerful commander yet, Army Chief and Chief of Defence Forces Field Marshal Asim Munir joined Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Asim Malik in a high-profile meeting in Islamabad with crypto firm Binance’s CEO Richard Teng.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Finance later said that the meeting, which also had senior Binance executives in attendance, focused on building a “secure, transparent and innovation-driven digital asset ecosystem” in the country.

Binance Senior Leadership Visits Pakistan as Government Signals Strong Commitment to Digital Asset Regulation

Senior leadership from @binance, including Global CEO @_RichardTeng, visited Islamabad for high-level engagements with Pakistan’s top leadership.

The meeting was… pic.twitter.com/vAh2WoMhg7

— Pakistan Crypto Council (@cryptocouncilpk) December 6, 2025

The meeting and the finance ministry’s assertion came even as local banks have been raising the alarm against the crypto push in Pakistan.

According to a Dawn report, at a consultative meeting convened Friday by the finance ministry and PVARA, Pakistan’s top banks expressed concern about money laundering, compliance risks, and global precedents where crypto-related gaps triggered major regulatory penalties.

Yet, the government appears determined to move forward.

According to the report, the government has now floated a “time-bound amnesty” allowing crypto traders, who handle more than $250 billion in annual turnover, to shift assets onto regulated platforms with no penalty.

A Binance representative told participants that Pakistani users hold around $5 billion on Binance alone, and argued that tokenised assets should be counted as part of Pakistan’s “liquid money supply”, according to the Dawn report.

“Liquid money supply” includes assets that can be easily and immediately used as a medium of exchange for transactions.

The Dawn reported that they were told, according to those present at the meeting, that Binance could provide real-time reporting, enable banks to lend against digitally verified collateral, and help Pakistan attract billions of dollars in new inflows, including new remittance routes that could sit atop the $38-billion Pakistan receives annually from overseas workers.

Banks, however, asked whether expecting such visibility and traceability was realistic.

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Also Read: Pakistan’s $21 billion crypto market is out of the shadows. It’s finally legal there

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Pakistan’s crypto rush

Crypto is officially banned for financial institutions in Pakistan, but it is allowed as legal tender.

In February, the Pakistani government established a Crypto Council. In May, the government shifted towards legalisation with proposals to regulate it as an economic lifeline through a formal, legal framework.

Also, the Crypto Council was elevated to a full-fledged regulatory body named the Pakistan Digital Assets Authority, tasked with overseeing and regulating digital assets, including cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies.

Before that, in April, Pakistan entered into a partnership with World Liberty Financial (WLF), a firm reportedly connected to members of Trump’s family. WLF has pledged support in helping Pakistan develop blockchain infrastructure, tokenise assets, and navigate the broader crypto industry. However, the specifics of the agreement remain unclear.

Then in July, the Virtual Assets Ordinance 2025 came into force for establishing a regulatory and sandbox environment through the creation of Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), the national regulator for virtual assets in Pakistan which would be independent.

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the country’s central bank which had banned crypto, announced in September that it would withdraw its earlier advisory against cryptocurrencies and begin formal legalisation.

It then announced it was drafting a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and coordinating with lawmakers on the Virtual Assets Act 2025, which will create a fully regulated framework for digital asset trading.

But why did the government move to regulate and legalise crypto so hurriedly—all within a year?

For Pakistan, crypto could offer a potential workaround to its known structural economic constraints—from slow banking systems to chronic foreign exchange shortages. Tokenised assets and remittance rails could ideally unlock new inflows.

From the point of view of Binance, Pakistan has 40 million Binance users, making it one of its biggest untapped regulated markets. A State-backed embrace of crypto could cement Binance’s dominance at a moment when its US legal troubles threaten its global footprint.

And, there could be a US angle, a Chinese and a military push to it too.

Binance–Trump–Pakistan triangle

Looming over Pakistan’s crypto pivot is the global controversy surrounding Binance and its Chinese founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ), who maintains a 90 percent stake in the company.

Zhao, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to failing to implement the US anti-money-laundering law at Binance and served several months in jail, received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump last month—a move Trump later claimed he barely recalled.

The pardon came shortly before Zhao deepened his engagement with Pakistan. In early 2025, Islamabad appointed him strategic adviser to the Pakistan Crypto Council, and several of Pakistan’s new crypto institutions, including the Pakistan Digital Assets Authority, were reportedly shaped with his input.

The relationship also intersects with the Trump family’s own crypto portfolio. Their company, World Liberty Financial (WLF), launched the USD1 stablecoin using code reportedly written with Binance’s help. Binance then promoted USD1 to its vast global user base, helping accumulate more than $2 billion worth of deposits that generate multimillion-dollar yields for Trump-linked interests.

Pakistan has since signed a “letter of intent” with WLF to cooperate on blockchain infrastructure and stablecoin integration. Bilal Bin Saqib, Pakistan’s key crypto architect, is also an adviser to WLF.

(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)

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Also Read: Crypto, crisis & the Trump connection: All about Pakistan’s new Virtual Assets Act

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Early data from the phase 1 trial (NCT05651932) of the MMSET/NSD2 inhibitor gintemetostat (KTX-1001) revealed that the agent was tolerable and produced encouraging antitumor activity in a heavily pretreated population of patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, including those with triple-class–refractory disease and high-risk features such as t(4;14). These results were presented at the 2025 ASH Annual Meeting, and Exposition.

Among 40 patients treated with gintemetostat, 1 patient had a very good partial response, 1 patient had a partial response, 2 patients had a minimal response, and 12 patients had stable disease.

“Single-agent activity was demonstrated in heavily pretreated R/R multiple myeloma including t(4;14) positive patients across different dose-escalation cohorts,” said lead author Saad Usmani, MD, MBA, chief of Myeloma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Safety and Tolerability

The safety profile from the phase 1 study showed that 75% of patients experienced treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs) potentially related to gintemetostat and 45% experienced grade 3 or higher potentially gintemetostat-related TEAEs. Three patients had TEAEs that required a dose reduction.

Twelve patients remained on treatment at the data cutoff date of June 13, 2025. Of the 28 patients who discontinued treatment, progressive disease was the cause for 82%, physician decision for 7.1%, consent withdrawal for 7.1%, and TEAE for 3.6% (1 patient).

The most common grade 3/4hematologic TEAEs were thrombocytopenia (grade 3, 10%; grade 4, 20%), anemia (25%; 0%), neutropenia (25%; 5%), and febrile neutropenia (5%; 0%). The most common grade 3 nonhematologic TEAEs were infections (12.5%) and fatigue (10%).

There were 2 patient deaths, both of which were not related to gintemetostat treatment. One patient death was due to respiratory failure and the other was due to pleural effusion.

Study Background, Design, and Patient Characteristics

Regarding the rationale for the study, Usmani explained, “Overexpression of MMSET—also known as NSD2—often results from t(4;14) and is associated with poor clinical outcomes in patients with multiple myeloma.”

Accordingly, Usmani et al sought to explore the safety and efficacy of gintemetostat, an oral, first-in-class, potent and selective inhibitor of MMSET4 in patients with R/R multiple myeloma.

The ongoing, open-label, multicenter phase 1 dose escalation/expansion study of gintemetostat has accrued 40 patients with R/R multiple myeloma. The study is enrolling patients aged ≥18 years with R/R multiple myeloma who have received at least 3 prior therapies, including a proteasome inhibitor (PI), an immunomodulatory drug (IMiD), and an anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody.

The median age of the 40 patients in the dose-escalation phase was 69 years (range, 50–83) and 52.5% of patients were female. The ECOG performance status was 0 (22.5%) and 1 (77.5%). The median time since initial diagnosis was 8 years (range, 2–20). About one-third (32.5%) of patients had extramedullary disease and 30% had high-risk multiple myeloma per IMWG criteria.

Regarding cytogenetic abnormalities, 47.5% of patients had t(4;14), comprising 20% with t(4;14) with 1q+ or del(1p32), and 27.5% with t(4;14) alone. Further, 1 patient had t(14;20), 5 had 1q21 amplification, and 4 had del(17p).

The median number of prior lines of therapy was 6.5 (range, 3–25), with 77.5% of patients having received at least 5 lines of therapy. Seventy percent of patients had prior stem cell transplant.

Prior drug classes of therapy received included IMiD/PI (100%), anti-CD38 (98%), BCMA CAR-T (42.5%), BCMA-targeted bispecific antibodies (BsAb) and antibody-drug conjugates (57.5%), GPRC5D-targeted BsAb (32.5%), and FcRH5-targeted BsAb (7.5%). All patients except 1 were triple-drug exposed and 80% were penta-drug exposed.

Overall, 9 dose levels have been assessed using a 3+3 dose-escalation design. Gintemetostat is being administered orally in a 28-day cycle. Usmani did not provide the specific details of the what the different dose levels were.

Regarding pharmacokinetics, Usmani said, “Gintemetostat plasma concentrations increased with dose across all 9 dose levels tested, and at steady-state, moderate variability in exposure of gintemetostat was observed.”

Summary and Next Steps

In a news release accompanying the presentation at the ASH meeting, a statement from Usmani summarized the findings and next steps with gintemetostat.

“In the dose-escalation phase, gintemetostat monotherapy showed a favorable safety and tolerability profile and demonstrated disease control and efficacy. Pharmacodynamic data confirm target engagement, and we look forward to advancing into the dose-expansion phase to evaluate combinations with proteasome inhibitors, IMiDs, and next-generation CELMoDs such as mezigdomide,” stated Usmani.²

References

1. Usmani S, Bories P, Gasparetto C, et al. Phase 1 study of ktx-1001, a first-in-class oral MMSET/NSD2 inhibitor, demonstrates clinical activity in relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. Blood. 2025;146(suppl 1): 250. doi:10.1182/blood-2025-250

2. K36 Therapeutics announces presentation of First-in-Human Clinical Data for Gintemetostat (KTX-1001) Demonstrating Target Engagement and Clinical Activity in Multiple Myeloma at ASH 2025 and the Appointment of Dr. Shinta Cheng, M.D., Ph.D., as Chief Medical Officer. Published online December 5, 2025. Accessed December 7, 2025. https://tinyurl.com/3wzem4nx

Preliminary activity and favorable safety were observed among patients with heavily pretreated, triple-class refractory, relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma who received single-agent gintemetostat (KTX-1001), according to a presentation on findings from a phase 1 study (NCT05651932) at the 2025 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition.¹

Among 40 patients treated with gintemetostat, 1 patient had a very good partial response, 1 patient had a partial response, 2 patients had a minimal response, and 12 patients had stable disease.

“Single-agent activity was demonstrated in heavily pretreated R/R multiple myeloma including t(4;14) positive patients across different dose-escalation cohorts,” said lead author Saad Usmani, MD, MBA, chief of Myeloma Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Safety and Tolerability

The safety profile from the phase 1 study showed that 75% of patients experienced treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs) potentially related to gintemetostat and 45% experienced grade ≥3 potentially gintemetostat-related TEAEs. Three patients had TEAEs that required a dose reduction.

Twelve patients remained on treatment at the data cutoff date of June 13, 2025. Of the 28 patients who discontinued treatment, progressive disease was the cause for 82%, physician decision for 7.1%, consent withdrawal for 7.1%, and TEAE for 3.6% (1 patient)

The most common grade 3/4hematologic TEAEs were thrombocytopenia (grade 3, 10%; grade 4, 20%), anemia (25%; 0%), neutropenia (25%; 5%), and febrile neutropenia (5%; 0%). The most common grade 3 nonhematologic TEAEs were infections (12.5%) and fatigue (10%).

There were 2 patient deaths, both of which were not related to gintemetostat treatment. One patient death was due to respiratory failure and the other was due to pleural effusion.

Study Background, Design, and Patient Characteristics

Regarding the rationale for the study, Usmani explained, “Overexpression of MMSET—also known as NSD2—often results from t(4;14) and is associated with poor clinical outcomes in patients with multiple myeloma.”

Accordingly, Usmani et al sought to explore the safety and efficacy of gintemetostat, an oral, first-in-class, potent and selective inhibitor of MMSET4 in patients with R/R multiple myeloma.

The ongoing, open-label, multicenter phase 1 dose escalation/expansion study of gintemetostat has accrued 40 patients with R/R multiple myeloma. The study is enrolling patients aged ≥18 years with R/R multiple myeloma who have received at least 3 prior therapies, including a proteasome inhibitor (PI), an immunomodulatory drug (IMiD), and an anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody.

The median age of the 40 patients in the dose-escalation phase was 69 years (range, 50-83) and 52.5% of patients were female. The ECOG performance status was 0 (22.5%) and 1 (77.5%). The median time since initial diagnosis was 8 years (range, 2-20). About one-third (32.5%) of patients had extramedullary disease and 30% had high-risk multiple myeloma per IMWG criteria.

Regarding cytogenetic abnormalities, 47.5% of patients had t(4;14), comprising 20% with t(4;14) with 1q+ or del(1p32), and 27.5% with t(4;14) alone. Further, 1 patient had t(14;20), 5 had 1q21 amplification, and 4 had del(17p).

The median number of prior lines of therapy was 6.5 (range, 3-25), with 77.5% of patients having received at least 5 lines of therapy. Seventy percent of patients had prior stem cell transplant.

Prior drug classes of therapy received included IMiD/PI (100%), anti-CD38 (98%), BCMA CAR-T (42.5%), BCMA-targeted bispecific antibodies (BsAb) and antibody-drug conjugates (57.5%), GPRC5D-targeted BsAb (32.5%), and FcRH5-targeted BsAb (7.5%). All patients except 1 were triple-drug exposed and 80% were penta-drug exposed.

Overall, 9 dose levels have been assessed using a 3+3 dose-escalation design. Gintemetostat is being administered orally in a 28-day cycle. Usmani did not provide the specific details of the what the different dose levels were.

Regarding pharmacokinetics, Usmani said, “Gintemetostat plasma concentrations increased with dose across all 9 dose levels tested, and at steady-state, moderate variability in exposure of gintemetostat was observed.”

Summary and Next Steps

In a news release accompanying the presentation at the ASH meeting, a statement from Usmani summarized the findings and next steps with gintemetostat.

“In the dose-escalation phase, gintemetostat monotherapy showed a favorable safety and tolerability profile and demonstrated disease control and efficacy. Pharmacodynamic data confirm target engagement, and we look forward to advancing into the dose-expansion phase to evaluate combinations with proteasome inhibitors, IMiDs, and next-generation CELMoDs such as mezigdomide,” stated Usmani.²

References

1. Usmani S, Bories P, Gasparetto C, et al. Phase 1 study of ktx-1001, a first-in-class oral MMSET/NSD2 inhibitor, demonstrates clinical activity in relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. Blood. 2025;146(suppl 1): 250. doi:10.1182/blood-2025-250
2. K36 Therapeutics announces presentation of First-in-Human Clinical Data for Gintemetostat (KTX-1001) Demonstrating Target Engagement and Clinical Activity in Multiple Myeloma at ASH 2025 and the Appointment of Dr. Shinta Cheng, M.D., Ph.D., as Chief Medical Officer. Published online December 5, 2025. Accessed December 7, 2025. https://tinyurl.com/3wzem4nx

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The early 1970s were a turbulent time in America — marked by soaring inflation, an oil crisis and a sharp drop in stock prices that left investors scrambling for safe havens.

And, according to billionaire investor Ray Dalio, history may be repeating itself. Surging prices and massive government spending could prompt investors to once again question the value of fiat currencies and the paper assets tied to them (1).

“It’s very much like the early ’70s … where do you put your money in?” Dalio said at the Greenwich Economic Forum (2). “When you are holding money, and you put it in a debt instrument, and when there’s such a supply of debt and debt instruments, it’s not an effective storehold of wealth.”

Dalio has long warned about the sheer size of America’s national debt, now hovering around $37.86 trillion and climbing. He has described the situation as a potential “debt death spiral” — where the government must borrow just to pay the interest on existing debt. Over time, this process accelerates.

If that number feels abstract, Dalio has a more personal warning.

The asset he’s talking about is something nearly everyone holds in one way or another, whether in bank accounts or under mattresses: the U.S. dollar.

In a recent post on X, Dalio shared a Q&A with the Financial Times (3). When asked what would happen to bonds and the dollar if a politically weakened Federal Reserve lets inflation run hot, his answer was blunt:

“It would lead bonds and the dollar to go down in value and if not rectified, would lead to them being an ineffective storehold of wealth and the breaking down of the monetary order as we know it.”

That comment couldn’t have come at a more sensitive time for the Federal Reserve. President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked Chair Jerome Powell and is searching for a replacement.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC in late November, “I think there’s a very good chance that the president will make an announcement before Christmas … I think it’s time for the Fed just to move back into the background, like, it used to do, calm things down and work for the American people (4).”

The President has also come under fire for attempting to oust Fed governor Lisa Cook, the first time a president has sought to remove a governor in the central bank’s 112-year history. Cook sued to keep her job, and it was ruled she could continue in her post (5).

In the midst of this turbulence, Dalio warned that if investors begin to believe the Fed will artificially hold rates too low, it could trigger “an unhealthy decline in the value of money.”

To be sure, that decline may already be underway. The U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the dollar against a basket of major foreign currencies, tumbled 10.8% in the first half of 2025 — its worst performance since 1973, when Richard Nixon was president. (6)

Meanwhile, inflation continues to chip away at Americans’ purchasing power. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, $100 in 2025 buys what just $12.05 could in 1970 — a sobering reminder that the dollar hasn’t been a very effective “storehold of wealth” for decades (7).

Experts are also warning of ‘stagflation,’ a term used to describe an era when GDP growth is moderate, inflation is high, and employment rates are taking a hit (8).

As Dailo notes, the late 70s and early 80s stand as a classic example of this stagnant economic trend. Today, economic measures are worrying: Inflation is still rising and outpacing the Fed’s predictions. The unemployment rate is rising, particularly for new grads. Perhaps most worrying of all, the national debt has just hit $38.4 trillion, and investors warn that the country may be headed into a spiral where the government borrows even more just to meet the interest on current payments.

The good news? Dalio revealed one asset he believes can help safeguard your wealth from what’s coming.

Read more: Warren Buffett used 8 solid, repeatable money rules to turn $9,800 into a $150B fortune. Start using them today to get rich (and stay rich)

Dalio’s answer is simple: gold.

“Gold is a very excellent diversifier in the portfolio,” he said (9).

“If you look at it just from a strategic asset allocation perspective, you would probably have something like 15% of your portfolio in gold … because it is the one asset that does very well when the typical parts of the portfolio go down.”

Gold’s appeal is straightforward. Unlike fiat currencies, it can’t be printed at will by central banks. It’s also long been viewed as the ultimate safe haven — and has proven its mettle this year by hitting record high prices. Gold performance is not tied to any one country, currency or economy. When markets wobble, or geopolitical tensions flare, investors tend to flock to gold, driving prices higher.

Dalio isn’t alone in that view. Jeffrey Gundlach, founder of DoubleLine Capital and widely known as the “Bond King,” recently said that a 25% portfolio allocation to gold “is not excessive,” calling the metal “an insurance policy” that’s likely to remain “in a winning mode” amid ongoing dollar weakness.

Over the past twelve months, gold prices have skyrocketed, and some investors predict even higher prices in 2026.

If you want to get in on the action, one way to invest in gold that also provides significant tax advantages is to open a gold IRA with the help of Goldco.

Gold IRAs allow investors to hold physical gold or gold-related assets within a retirement account, which combines the tax advantages of an IRA with the protective benefits of investing in gold, making it an attractive option for those looking to potentially hedge their retirement funds against economic uncertainties.

With a minimum purchase of $10,000, Goldco offers a 1-day IRA set-up, price match guarantee, highest buy-back guarantee, award-winning customer service and access to a library of retirement resources.

Plus, the company will match up to 10% of qualified purchases in free silver. Just keep in mind that gold is often best used as one part of a well-diversified portfolio.

Gold isn’t the only asset investors turn to during inflationary times. Real estate has also proven to be a powerful hedge.

When inflation rises, property values often increase as well, reflecting the higher costs of materials, labor and land. At the same time, rental income tends to go up, providing landlords with a revenue stream that adjusts for inflation.

Over the past five years, the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index has jumped by 49%, reflecting strong demand and limited housing supply (10).

Of course, high home prices can make buying a home more challenging, especially with mortgage rates still elevated. And being a landlord isn’t exactly hands-off work — managing tenants, maintenance and repairs can quickly eat into your time (and returns).

The good news? You don’t need to buy a property outright — or deal with leaky faucets — to invest in real estate today. Crowdfunding platforms like Arrived offer an easier way to get exposure to this income-generating asset class.

Backed by world-class investors like Jeff Bezos, Arrived allows you to invest in shares of rental homes with just $100, all without the hassle of mowing lawns, fixing leaky faucets or handling difficult tenants.

The process is simple: browse a curated selection of homes that have been vetted for their appreciation and income potential. Once you find a property you like, select the number of shares you’d like to purchase and then sit back as you start receiving any positive rental income distributions from your investment.

Another option is Homeshares, which gives accredited investors access to the $35 trillion U.S. home equity market — a space that’s historically been the exclusive playground of institutional investors.

Homeshares allows accredited investors to gain direct exposure to a portfolio of owner-occupied homes in top U.S. cities through their U.S. Home Equity Fund — without the hassles of buying, owning or managing property.

The fund focuses on homes with substantial equity, using Home Equity Agreements (HEAs) to let homeowners access liquidity without taking on debt or interest payments. This creates an attractive, low-maintenance investment vehicle for retirement savers, with a minimum investment of $25,000.

With risk-adjusted target returns of 14% to 17%, the U.S. Home Equity Fund offers investors access to America’s largest store of household wealth.

And for a limited time, Homeshares will provide Moneywise readers an exclusive 5% bonus for IRA investments.

It’s easy to see why great works of art tend to appreciate over time. Supply is limited, and many famous pieces have already been snatched up by museums and collectors. That scarcity also makes art an attractive option for investors looking to diversify and preserve wealth during periods of high inflation.

For example, in 2022 — shortly after U.S. inflation hit a 40-year high — a collection of art owned by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen sold for $1.5 billion at Christie’s New York, making it the most valuable collection in auction history (11).

Historically, this alternative asset has been restricted to high rollers like Allen, but that’s quick. changing.

With Masterworks — a platform for investing in shares of blue-chip artwork by renowned artists, including Pablo Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Banksy — you can get a start with art. It’s easy to use, and Masterworks has had 25 successful exits to date.

After signing up, all you have to do is browse their impressive portfolio of paintings and choose how many shares you’d like to buy. Masterworks will handle all the details, from purchase and procurement all the way to storage and sale.

Masterworks has distributed roughly $61 million back to investors, including the principal. New offerings have sold out in minutes, but you can skip their waitlist here.

Note that investing involves risk. See Reg A disclosures here: masterworks.com/cd.

We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our editorial ethics and guidelines.

CNBC (1), (4); @Bloomberg Podcasts (2) @RayDalio (3); Fortune (5); Bloomberg Originals (6); Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (7); Forbes (8); Bloomberg Television (9); S&P Global (10); Christie’s (11)

This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.

MSCI (MSCI) just rolled out its All Country Public + Private Equity Index, a daily benchmark that blends listed stocks with modelled private equity exposures to give institutions a cleaner, portfolio level view of total equity risk and return.

See our latest analysis for MSCI.

That backdrop of product innovation sits against a softer tape, with the latest $538.26 share price reflecting a roughly 10% year to date share price decline. Even so, the five year total shareholder return above 35% still points to a longer term structural winner whose momentum has cooled rather than broken.

If this kind of index driven story has your attention, it could be a good moment to broaden your radar and explore fast growing stocks with high insider ownership.

With the shares down double digits over 12 months but analysts still seeing more than 20% upside, is MSCI quietly drifting into undervalued territory, or is the market already discounting its next leg of growth?

Comparing the narrative fair value of $657.56 to MSCI’s last close at $538.26, the story leans toward meaningful upside if the assumptions hold.

Accelerated development and cross-selling of proprietary data, analytics, and private capital solutions (including recently launched products and business lines like private equity benchmarks and risk tools) will tap into new client bases and increase wallet share among institutional clients, driving durable multi-year compounded revenue growth.

Read the complete narrative.

Curious how steady double digit earnings growth, rising margins, and a premium future multiple can still point to upside from here? The narrative spells out the math behind that confidence.

Result: Fair Value of $657.56 (UNDERVALUED)

Have a read of the narrative in full and understand what’s behind the forecasts.

However, softer retention in analytics and ESG, along with fee pressure in passive products, could slow recurring growth and challenge today’s premium valuation assumptions.

Find out about the key risks to this MSCI narrative.

While the narrative fair value suggests upside, the market is already paying 33.1 times earnings, far above MSCI’s own fair ratio of 16.6 times and the US capital markets average of 24.3 times. If sentiment cools, could that premium compress faster than earnings grow?

See what the numbers say about this price — find out in our valuation breakdown.

If your view diverges or you would rather dig into the numbers yourself, you can shape a personalized MSCI story in just minutes, Do it your way.

A great starting point for your MSCI research is our analysis highlighting 3 key rewards and 1 important warning sign that could impact your investment decision.

Before you move on, give yourself an edge by scanning targeted opportunities in minutes using the Simply Wall Street Screener, so you are not leaving potential returns on the table.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Companies discussed in this article include MSCI.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com

SharpLink Gaming (SBET) has quietly turned into a curious mix of sports betting affiliate marketing and Ethereum staking, and that blend is starting to matter more as investors reassess its recent share performance.

See our latest analysis for SharpLink Gaming.

At today’s $10.72 share price, SharpLink’s year to date share price return of 32.68% contrasts sharply with a 3 year total shareholder return of negative 75.19%. This hints that recent momentum may be more of a speculative reset than a durable rerating.

If SharpLink’s mix of sports betting and crypto aligned yield has your attention, it could be worth broadening your search and discovering fast growing stocks with high insider ownership.

With revenue nearly doubling yet profits still elusive and the share price far below analyst targets, has SharpLink quietly become a mispriced growth story, or is the recent rebound simply markets fairly valuing its future potential?

On a price to book basis, SharpLink’s 0.7x multiple at a $10.72 share price screens as undervalued versus both its hospitality peers and our own fair value work.

The price to book ratio compares a company’s market value to the net assets on its balance sheet and is often used for asset light, service based or financially cyclical businesses. For SharpLink, trading below its book value suggests investors are placing a discount on its equity despite rapid top line growth and expectations for future profitability.

Compared with the wider US hospitality industry average of 2.6x and a peer group closer to 5.3x, SharpLink’s 0.7x price to book signals a steep valuation gap. If its execution in affiliate marketing and Ethereum staking even partially matches the forecast growth profile, there is room for the multiple to move meaningfully closer to sector norms.

See what the numbers say about this price — find out in our valuation breakdown.

Result: Price-to-book of 0.7x (UNDERVALUED)

However, lingering losses and heavy reliance on volatile Ethereum staking economics could quickly undermine today’s apparent discount if sentiment or regulation were to turn.

Find out about the key risks to this SharpLink Gaming narrative.

Our DCF model values SharpLink at $13.86 per share, around 22.7% above the current $10.72 price, which also points to undervaluation. However, DCFs depend heavily on long term growth and profitability assumptions. This raises the question: is the discount a genuine opportunity, or is it simply compensation for execution risk?

Look into how the SWS DCF model arrives at its fair value.

Simply Wall St performs a discounted cash flow (DCF) on every stock in the world every day (check out SharpLink Gaming for example). We show the entire calculation in full. You can track the result in your watchlist or portfolio and be alerted when this changes, or use our stock screener to discover 907 undervalued stocks based on their cash flows. If you save a screener we even alert you when new companies match – so you never miss a potential opportunity.

If this perspective does not quite align with your own, or you would rather dig into the numbers yourself, you can build a personalised view in minutes, Do it your way.

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Almost every couple that I know in their 20s, 30s or even 40s has had the same argument with their parents before getting married.

The parents say to open a wedding registry. The couple responds that they do not want one. They don’t expect gifts from wedding guests (their “presence is enough”), and they have been cohabiting for years and already have plates, bedsheets and a blender. In fact, since they live in a small rented apartment, they barely have room for the plates that they do have – let alone a set of china.

Perhaps, they will timidly suggest, guests who really want to give a gift can donate to a honeymoon fund? Or better yet, make a small contribution toward a downpayment on a house?

The parents get upset. Asking for cash, they say, is “tacky”, and also puts people in the difficult position of having to choose an amount to give. The young couple will point out that they are not asking for cash, just giving an option for those who want to mark the occasion.

There will be a long argument, maybe even some shouting or tears, and the parents will win. As a compromise, there may be a house-fund bucket on the registry, down at the bottom after the really niche cookware. (If the couple is especially sneaky, they will pretend to go along with their parents, but rig the registry with unattractive gifts to make the fund look more appealing by comparison.)

In the end, the wedding will be lovely. And afterward the married couple may have a china set, but – like nearly half of US millennials – no house in which to put it.

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Despite some signs that the wildly expensive housing market is cooling down, buying a home is still a fantasy for millions of younger Americans. In the 1980s, the median age of someone buying their first home was about 29. Today the median first-time buyer is 40 – and can expect their first home to cost twice as much money, adjusted for inflation, as their parents’ home did in the mid-1980s.

The situation is so bad that last month the Trump administration floated the idea of introducing a 50-year mortgage to make houses more affordable, then frantically walked back the idea when critics pointed out that a millennial buying their first home at 40 might die before paying it off.

This is a crisis, given how closely home ownership is tied to wealth creation in the US. The wealth gap between renters and owners has never been wider, and soaring prices keep enriching those who already own, while locking everyone else out. In fact, the newlyweds with the china set may be creeping into early middle age with few assets at all: no home, no significant investments, perhaps not even a car.

I am a millennial who came of age during a financial crisis, global recession and pandemic. No, most millennials and gen Zers are not starving to death. But our adult lives have been marked by stagnant wages, inflation, broken political institutions and a sense of national decline. Small wonder, then, that we feel cynical about our country and pessimistic about our future; that some of us are attracted to increasingly radical politics of both left and right; that we marry later and have children at far lower rates.

A recent study by economists at Northwestern and the University of Chicago predicted that Americans born in the 1990s “will reach retirement with a home ownership rate roughly 9.6 percentage points lower than that of their parents’ generation”, and that when owning a home feels impossible, people spend more, work less, and take on riskier investments – a recipe for economic disaster.

Some observers have dubbed this attitude “financial nihilism”. If you have been working for years yet feel no closer to paying off your student debt or buying a house, why not “quiet quit” your job, put a lavish vacation on your credit card, or liquidate your last savings bond from Grandma and bet it all on online poker or a dubious cryptocurrency?

American baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are the richest cohort in the history of the entire world. Yet they are also the first generation of Americans to leave to their children a world that is, by most common economic metrics, worse. So why are we still being told we would own a house if we drank less Starbucks, or shamed for failing to meet the milestones of a vanishing age?

And why, when economic alarms have been ringing for years, does it often feel like only younger Americans hear them?

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Earlier this year, as part of my reporting on American politics, I was watching a video of Tucker Carlson, the rightwing commentator, giving a speech at a conservative political conference. I was somewhat distracted, until I heard something that made me rewind the video.

Between asides about how New York smells like “weed and Halal food”, Carlson made a prescient point. “At some point the basic economics really matter,” he said. Rather than GDP, he argued that the health of the economy should be measured by something simpler.

“I’ve got a bunch of kids,” he said. “Can they afford houses with full-time jobs at, like, 27, 28? And the answer is no way. And the answer is that 35-year-olds with really good jobs can’t afford a house unless they stretch and go deep into debt.”

He continued: “And I just think that’s a total disaster … why? Two reasons. One, if people don’t own things, they don’t feel ownership of the country they’re in, and the country gets super volatile because people feel like they’ve got nothing to lose; when you have a lawn, trust me, you’re thinking longterm. Second, it’s really hard to have a family without a house, it is. It’s, like, super fun to live in an apartment if … there’s, like, a bar downstairs, you’re in a cool neighborhood, [but] you’re not going to have three kids there. You can’t.”

The “only young people in general that you will ever meet who have houses are young people whose parents help them”, he added. “And God bless their parents, that’s a perfectly great thing to do for your kids, but most people’s parents can’t afford to do that” – in part, he noted, because some are already in debt for their children’s education.

He called the situation a “national emergency”.

Carlson is not the first person to make these points, and leftwingers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani have made similar arguments in different forms. You know something is structurally broken when Carlson and AOC are, at least on this subject, reading from the same page. Either way, what he said struck a chord. It also made me think about my own family.

My parents bought their first home in 1985, when my mother was 29 and my father was 31, for about $50,000 (or $150,000 in current dollars). My father was an accountant and my mother was a sales representative at a commercial wallpaper company. The home was an apartment that they were able to buy, below market rate, when the building where my father rented converted some rentals to owner units. It was tiny – a glorified studio – but it was in Lenox Hill, in Manhattan, and they sold it at a profit just two years later.

They moved to the New Jersey suburbs, where they bought a three-bedroom fixer-upper with a yard. In 1992, they sold it for a profit and bought another house with a larger lot down the street. They somehow also found the money, time and energy to buy and renovate a fishing cottage in Pennsylvania as a summer house.

No, my parents were not representative of everyone. They were white, college-educated professionals, who for part of that period had dual full-time incomes, and they were unusually adventurous about real estate. They also spent nights and weekends doing DIY home renovations and scrimped to save money. (“We got takeout maybe once every two or three months,” my mother said pointedly, when I asked her to recollect. “And we brought bag lunches to work.” My father partly disputed that characterization, saying, “Maybe your mother did … I used to buy my sandwich in the city.”) Mortgage rates were also higher than now.

When my parents later separated, the suburban house with the big lot and the summer cottage were the first financial casualties. Still, even after their separation they both managed to land on their feet, home-wise.

I am 35 and owning a home seems unfathomable. Like many millennials (usually defined as people currently between the ages of 29 and 44), I did everything my elders advised. I got good grades in high school, worked part-time jobs to “build character”, graduated from a good university, and have now been working full-time for years. I am a journalist – which means I work in an industry that has been in decline for decades – but I am one of the lucky few who has a good job with a decent income and benefits. My girlfriend, who works at a research and strategy firm, also has a good job. We both hold master’s degrees.

We could move to a cheaper area, but both our jobs require us to be in or near New York City. (ConsumerAffairs recently calculated that it would take a typical New York state household 23 years to save enough for a downpayment on a median-priced home.) So, like many millennials, we rent – spending, in our case, $27,000 a year.

You could say that that is a fair trade for a roof above your head. But that is all it gets. Our diligent rent payments build no equity – they are not even reflected in our credit scores. The more than $150,000 I have spent on rent in my life is money I will never see again.

None of this is a sob story, exactly. No one would call us poor. We get takeout, more than our parents would probably say we should, and we travel several times a year – though mainly to see family or attend weddings. We have nice things: good clothes, the obligatory (though secondhand) Le Creuset pot, a large and delightfully high-definition television. When you cannot have big things, you console yourself with small ones. Yet even scuttling these indulgences would not make much difference in our finances.

That’s partly because of an odd paradox of modern life. For most of history, including when boomers came of age, living was cheap and things were expensive; today it’s the opposite. As Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein note in their recent book, Abundance, the result is a weird dissonance for many Americans: luxuries and little treats are obtainable, yet the staples of life – housing, healthcare, groceries, transportation – are frustratingly costly.

Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist, recently pointed out that if you get a hole in your wall, it is now cheaper to buy a flatscreen TV to cover the hole than it is to fix the drywall.

I called a handyman to see if that was true. It is.

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Baby boomers may be one of the most resented groups in America. Every week, about 220,000 people visit a forum on Reddit that exists solely for the purpose of complaining about them – turning older people’s lectures about youth entitlement on their head in first-person reports of boomer “tantrums” or posts mocking the “Gravy SEAL” politics of conservative uncles.

On TikTok and Instagram, people debate why boomers have such a hard time empathizing with younger Americans. Some blame insufficient psychotherapy; others, more viciously, make insinuations about the long-term effects of 1960s lead-paint poisoning on the brain.

Some of this rage is just ageism, or the familiar rebellion of generation against generation, or the eternal standoff of parents wanting a “thank you” while their children wait for a “sorry”. But at its heart this ire has less to do with the actual realities of baby boomers’ lives – which are as variegated as those of any group, with some rich, some struggling and some lying in fields in Vietnam – than with what they symbolize: the disastrous mismanagement of our national inheritance.

Pundits working in more academic arenas than TikTok have described boomers as thieves of posterity (the Wall Street Journal’s Joseph Sternberg); as “strangely uncurious about how the world is not really working for their kids” (the rightwing financier Peter Thiel); as economic bullies (the former US labor secretary Robert Reich); and as a “generation of sociopaths” who rigged the system in their favor, then pulled up the ladder behind them (the writer and venture capitalist Bruce Gibney).

And it is undeniable that American boomers, who were conceived during an extraordinary postwar economic boom and born into the most powerful country in the history of the world, have not seemed like responsible custodians of what they inherited.

Sure, they were often good stewards of their own prosperity. The hippies who danced in puddles at Woodstock and held Marxist reading groups at their college campuses often turned out to be socialists, when it suited them, and canny capitalists, when it did not. Because wages were relatively strong, and education, healthcare, childcare, and housing were all more affordable in real terms than they are now, boomers had money for downpayments on “starter homes”, then more real estate, then for investing in a stock market that had decades of bull runs. Some also worked at the same company for years, at a time when loyalty was rewarded with promotions and pensions.

Pensions! Upward mobility! Starter homes! It all sounds quaint, but if you try to explain why, older Americans tend to get defensive and interrupt – “We worked our asses off!” multiple people have told me – before you get to the important point: not that boomers did not work very hard, but that they worked hard in a system that, at least for some, repaid that work.

Then there’s this: from around the early 1990s, when they began to come into political power, and for the decades since, boomers repeatedly voted for tax cuts for themselves, at the cost of a ballooning national debt, and slashed public works – while protecting Medicare and social security for their own retirements. Some taxpayer-subsidized private Medicare programs now pay for retirees’ pet supplies, hair-styling, golf-course fees, and ski passes.

Yet the taxpayer-funded public universities where many boomers were able to work their way through school with summer jobs are now four times more expensive, adjusted for inflation – which may be why millennials at 40 have three times the student debt that boomers did at the same age. And the social security and Medicare programs supporting boomers in retirement will be severely overextended by the time millennials try to use them.

At the same time, the prosaic middle-income jobs that once powered upward mobility – teacher, paralegal, professor, trucker, machinist – are now fighting rearguard battles against flat wages, job insecurity and automation, while the best-paid corporate and tech jobs are concentrated in regions where salaries are high but the cost of living is even higher.

In the process, a law that held true for most of US history – that each generation does better than the one before – has collapsed. “In 1940 there was a 90% chance that you were going to earn more than your parents. To somebody born today, it is just a coin flip,” Jeremy Ney, a professor at Columbia’s business school, recently told the Washington Post.

To put it another way, in 1989, when many boomers were hitting the stride of their careers, an American 35 to 44 years of age already had a median net worth almost 75% that of someone then 65 to 74. In 2022, someone 35 to 44 had just a third of the wealth of the older person.

In a 2016 essay about middle-class precarity, the writer Neal Gabler said: “In the 1950s and 60s, economic growth democratized prosperity. In the 2010s, we have democratized financial insecurity.” (It is worth noting that Gabler was writing before the shadow of AI job losses began to fall over many industries.)

Gabler’s line could refer to any number of problems today – but none more glaring than housing. The home ownership crisis is a mismatch between stagnant incomes and ever-rising prices. Most experts also view it as a problem of supply and demand: there is not enough housing being built in the parts of the US where people most want to live.

(Conservatives tend to blame this problem on overzealous regulations that have made building homes more expensive and difficult, particularly in areas that are already expensive, while progressives tend to blame real estate speculators, such as the private equity firms that buy houses to turn them into rentals, and zoning laws that discourage multifamily homes and apartment buildings. Both are probably correct.)

Older people, seeing the value of their nest eggs rise ever higher, do not want to sell them yet, and are often the first to lobby local boards to prevent the construction of new housing that might reduce the value of their own.

“There are so many boomers, and they don’t want to die or move out of their housing,” William Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institution, told me. It’s partly a “timing issue”, he said; many boomers are in good health, and not old enough to feel that they should be in a retirement community.

“I’m 66,” he added, almost apologetically. “I don’t want to move into retirement – so I’m taking up a house that some young family could otherwise occupy.”

Even when boomers are ready to vacate, it is not clear how many younger buyers can afford, or will want, their houses. After years lovingly perfecting their dream homes, some boomers no doubt hope their children will buy or inherit them. But millennials, according to some reports, tend to regard big, beautiful Martha Stewart-style houses with the puzzled admiration of middle-class Europeans of the 1950s looking at the half-empty mansions of the fading aristocracy: impressive, but who could afford the upkeep?

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My cousin Matt, who also lives in New York, bought an apartment with his wife a few years ago, when he was 35. They got a third-floor walkup in Brooklyn with two bedrooms and 690 sq ft. Their building was built in 1937 and they cannot control their own heat. They paid $900,000 – an eye-popping sum, he acknowledged – and consider themselves lucky.

I called Matt to find out his secret. Had he and his wife made their downpayment with the help of family money – as is the case, by one estimate, for nearly a quarter of millennials and gen Zers who have recently bought homes?

No, he said. He and his wife paid themselves. (Their parents did pay for part of their wedding, and for his wife’s education and part of Matt’s.) They both had savings, well-paid corporate jobs (albeit with salaries that never seem to quite keep up with inflation) and no remaining student debt. They rushed to sign their mortgage when interest rates were low.

Even then, he said, it felt as if “both of us, put together, barely got across the line”. Just a couple weeks later, rates started to rise, and they might not have been able to afford the apartment. He and his wife were relieved to be home owners when, a few years later, they had their first child.

“And that’s kind of the shock around all this is,” he said. “Like, if we [could barely do it], who the hell is supposed to be able to do this? We have a lot of single friends who’ve been talking about buying places for years, and it’s just impossible. They’re just going to rent forever, unless they get married to someone who’s making almost as much as they are.”

He chuckled. “My parents had three children, two houses, two plots of land, and two businesses by the time they were 35.”

The “funny thing”, he said, is that many millennials, who already lag behind previous generations when it comes to typical milestones such as marriage, home ownership and children, are now waiting for wealth inheritances “so that we can live the lives we’ve been told we’re supposed to be living by our parents. But by the time we get them, it’ll be too late to live those lives.”

I asked him if gets into arguments with older people about economics. “It’s kind of a waste of time,” he said drily. “I don’t think our parents’ generation has ever been wrong. And they walked uphill, both ways, in the snow, their whole lives.”

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Of course, you may have heard about the “great wealth transfer”, a day in the near-ish future when inheritances from their boomer parents will supposedly make younger people affluent overnight. Banks and asset management firms have estimated that trillions of dollars in wealth will be transferred over the next 25 years. That prediction has led to a flurry of sometimes breathless media coverage about the remaking of the global economy.

But Gale, the economist, believes that the transfer has been greatly overstated. The problem is that “intergenerational transfers are largely a phenomenon of the extremely rich giving to the very rich”, he said. “The median inheritance is not going to be life-transforming.”

Despite the stereotype of wealthy boomers careening around Florida in motorboats, not all have money to leave significant inheritances; people also live longer now, and have more medical and assisted-living costs. (Not for nothing, the healthcare industry is now the largest employer in 38 of 50 states.) And some boomers have indicated that they plan to live life to the fullest and leave nothing to their heirs (“die with zero”), or donate to charity to protect their children’s work ethic from the ravages of financial security.

But the biggest issue is that these inheritances, for those millennials or gen Zers who get them, will mostly arrive too late. “People need the money when they’re forming households and raising kids,” Gale said. “Getting it when they’re 60 or 65 isn’t as useful.”

Kurt Supe, a financial adviser with CFD Investments and Creative Financial Designs, helps clients plan retirement. His job often feels “more like [that of] a psychologist … than a financial planner”, he told me, because of the generational disconnect – and lack of communication – between clients and their children.

Many of his clients, Supe said, are boomers who worked decades at steady, middle-income jobs, lived conservatively, and now have a couple million dollars in retirement wealth. A typical client might be a midwestern couple who worked as teachers, enjoyed an excellent pension plan and low cost of living, and do not understand why their late-30s child in, say, California still does not own a home despite a low-six-figure salary as a software engineer.

He likes to make a board game analogy. Boomers and people of his generation (early gen X) were playing “with a Monopoly board where all the real estate pieces are still sitting in the box and we have the opportunity to buy them all”, he said. “The younger generation is playing with all of the real estate already bought, and they’re having to try to negotiate their way to get just a piece of the dream. I mean, it’s two very different games.”

If his clients are in good financial shape, he encourages them to give their children early inheritances or help them buy a house. Yet clients are often resistant – because they believe this will somehow make their progeny irresponsible; because previous financial advisers (who are often paid based on how much client money they manage) instilled in them a fear of touching their funds; or because they believe they may face an “emergency”.

“I’m like, what kind of $4m emergency could you possibly have?” he said. “But they’re terrified to give $10,000 away to their kids at Christmas, because what if they need that money someday?”

Many boomers, he thinks, unconsciously adopted the attitudes of parents who survived the Great Depression. He is fond of saying: “There is no prize for dying with the most money.”

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It seems ridiculous that anyone would envy millennials’ fortunes, but the generation after – Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012 – may already wish they had a fraction of their economic security.

Recent college graduates are discovering that traditionally safe white-collar industries, such as tech, finance, and corporate law, are glutted or anticipate AI-related job losses. Perhaps the US will soon taste the kind of youth unemployment that has long haunted some European countries; newly minted computer engineers, the New York Times reports, are applying to jobs at Chipotle.

When you don’t have income or wealth, you turn to credit. According to the New York Federal Reserve, 15.3% of Gen Zers with credit cards have maxed out their cards.

These recent graduates may never have china sets, or much use for them, though they can console themselves with Domino’s pizzas bought with installment plans. Earlier this year, Klarna, a financing company, announced a program that would allow people to pay for food deliveries with “buy now, pay later” loans. In August, Klarna sold up to $26bn of these loans to Nelnet – the same firm that services millions of Americans’ student loan debts.

“If you take a long view,” Gale, the economist, told me, “the US economy is incredibly resilient.” That is undoubtedly true, and important to remember. The slowing of population growth, among other factors, may also eventually make housing cheaper. Yet it can be difficult to feel optimistic right now.

Recently, as my mother, girlfriend and I returned from visiting family for Thanksgiving, my mother asked how my article about young people’s financial travails was going. We were in a rental car, and I was driving through a tunnel. (It was already dark out, so no, there was no light on the other end.) I said that I was still working on it.

“I thought of some more points,” she said, “as devil’s advocate. Houses may be more expensive now, but we paid for your college.” (My parents paid for the lion’s share of my undergraduate education, which I appreciate.) “I had to work my way through college. My parents didn’t pay for anything. Not college, certainly not a meal plan.”

I started to point out that it was easier to work your way through school then, when colleges, adjusted for inflation, were –

“Well,” she said, sitting upright. “It didn’t feel easy. Not to me. Not at the time.”

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The Federal Reserve is set to cut interest rates next week despite deep divisions among its officials on the direction of the US economy, according to leading academic economists.

The rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee meets on Tuesday, with the vast majority of investors expecting the US central bank to lower US borrowing costs by a quarter point for the third meeting in a row the following day.

Most of the economists polled by the Chicago Booth Clark Center on behalf of the Financial Times agree with the markets’ view, with 85 per cent of the 40 respondents agreeing that the Fed will ease borrowing costs in response to fears the US labour market is weakening.

However, they think the committee will almost certainly be divided on a move that looks set to leave the US central bank’s benchmark federal funds target range at its lowest level in more than three years. This comes amid mounting concerns that ordinary Americans are facing affordability pressures due to higher costs.

FOMC members have spent the run-up to the final vote of 2025 debating whether to prioritise a weakening US labour market over an inflation rate that has been above the central bank’s 2 per cent goal since the spring of 2021.

Several regional Fed presidents have said that, although they had not supported the Fed’s previous rate cut in October, they would back one next week because of concerns that inflation in the dominant services sector was creeping up. This is at a time when the full impact of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on the price of US imports is yet to be felt, they say.

New York Fed president John Williams signalled late last month that he and other leading members of the committee would back another quarter-point cut as insurance against a further slowdown in the US labour market.

Just one respondent to the FT-Chicago Booth poll said the 12 voting members of the FOMC would be able to overcome their differences and back a rate cut in unison. Sixty per cent of respondents thought there would be two dissents, with another third expecting three or more.

“If the rationale for the dissent is that they are missing their inflation target, then this can improve the credibility of the target,” said Stephen Cecchetti, a professor at Brandeis University. “At the same time, significant division — whether or not they vote against the decision — raises questions about the FOMC’s collective goals.”

There have not been more than two dissenting votes cast at an FOMC meeting since September 2019. The last time there were more than three was in 1992.

The most likely candidate to vote against a rate cut is Kansas City Fed president Jeff Schmid, who also dissented in October. Susan Collins, president of the Boston Fed, and Chicago’s Austan Goolsbee have indicated that they could join Schmid in voting against the consensus this time around.

Fed governor Michael Barr has also signalled he believes there is little room to lower borrowing costs. His counterpart on the board, Stephen Miran, will almost certainly call for a jumbo 50 basis point cut again.

Miran, a close ally of Trump, shares the US president’s desire for borrowing costs to fall rapidly.

After several strong years, many on the FOMC think the US labour market is beginning to cool. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed an unexpectedly high number of jobs were added to the world’s largest economy in September. But unemployment has edged up, and more recent private sector data shows US businesses are firing more workers.

Many respondents to the poll agreed with the FOMC’s hawks that the US central bank needed to focus more on the fight against inflation than maintaining a strong labour market.

Forty-eight per cent thought that controlling prices should be the priority, against 5 per cent who thought the focus should be on jobs. The rest wanted both sides of the Fed’s dual mandate to be given equal weight.

“I would prefer that the US drop the dual mandate in favour of one that solely focuses on inflation,” said Deborah Lucas, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “A direct link for a strong effect of monetary policy on employment has not been empirically well established.”

While hawks also point to relatively strong US growth, doves highlight that the US economy is heavily reliant on a boom in AI and AI-adjacent activity that has driven capital spending and helped prop up retail spending on the back of higher valuations for tech stocks.

The respondents were also asked what a 20 per cent drop in the value of the benchmark S&P 500 stock index would do to the US economy. A third said the subsequent fall in consumption and investment would trigger a US recession, while almost two-thirds said US growth would weaken, but not by enough to trigger a serious slowdown.

Additional data visualisation by Ian Hodgson and Carolina Vargas