Powder keg year for geopolitics
Iran, Venezuela and North Korea are all potential flashpoints in 2018
The risk landscape in 2018 is being pulled in two competing directions: on one hand, global economic growth has been revised upwards for the best outlook since the global financial crisis. On the other, geopolitical competition is at its punchiest since the end of the Cold War, with material (if still modest) threats of both trade wars and real wars. This dynamic, explored in our RiskMap 2018 forecast, has been bullish for oil prices since mid-2017, but 2018 is far from a one-way bet. In terms of sheer physical fundamentals, the most obvious factor continues to be the predictable response by US shale drillers (and their bankers) to rising prices. Shale drilling activity continues to neatly l
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