[NEW INSIGHT] Why multimedia is becoming a CEOs most powerful thought leadership tool in 2026
In the social calendar, January is usually honoured as the month of “change”. Pint-dependent City workers stop pummelling their livers, PureGym cashes in on fickle Mr Olympia dreamers, and everyone – literally everyone – manufactures a knee-jerk, abstract self-promise when asked, ‘What’s your New Year’s resolution?’.
It’s safe to say that I’m not its biggest fan. Being honest, I don’t see the point of kidding yourself into forced self-improvement, when, inevitably, at our cores, we all remain the same people, with the same selves, same desires, and same rationale.
But don’t take it from me… just look at President Trump.
Circa three weeks into 2026, and Mr America First hasn’t changed one bit. He has entered sovereign Venezuelan territory to capture disgraced former President-Dictator Nicolas Maduro – an act which led to the performative, illegitimate gifting of a Nobel Peace Prize – and just more recently, has since threatened to annex Greenland.
I’ll touch on the latter a bit more. Of course, the market reaction was unsurprising – gold shot up… some things don’t change, eh? – but it’s the geopolitical implications that particularly interest me. The US, which co-founded NATO in 1949 on the back of joint Soviet scepticism, is threatening the alliance’s very unity, muscling its strongest members with Liberation-Day-style tariffs.
Markets are no longer responding purely to data. They are responding to leaders changing their minds in real time.
Now, should said European countries leverage their $8tn of US bonds and equities, sell these holdings in the face of any retaliatory move from Trump, and give Jerome Powell a massive heart attack? Probably not, considering it would smash NATO into oblivion. But, no matter what you think, virtue signalling alone just won’t do.
In any case, whatever levity Starmer had coming out of Christmas, it’s safe to say it’s well and truly gone. As is its base state of being, UK politics is in complete and utter chaos.
Robert Jenrick – morose, no doubt, following his loss in the Tory leadership race – was fired and then nabbed by Reform, after leaving his resignation letter out in the open; Starmer has opened fire on GenAlpha in proposing a social-media ban for under-16s; and perhaps the worst of all, Rachel Reeves has basically taken credit for the FTSE’s limited recent joys.
Volatility today is as much a political signal as it is an economic one.
Now, I know I am one of the bigger Reeves x London Market bashers going, but to be fair to our chancellor, relaxing listing rules plus stamp duty on new IPOs is a good, albeit obvious and delayed, move to reinvigorate our capital’s ailing financial status. It’s something I have vehemently argued for before, and as is right, I will doff my cap here.
Look, I get it. You don’t read these newsletters for positivity. You read them to hear glum, glib, flippant commentary about how the markets are volatile, politicians are faulted, and the world is as busy as ever.
But with a US-NATO showdown on the cards… who doesn’t need a bit of sunshine?