The New Financial Normal - Perspectives for January 2026

The year 2025 was characterized by macroeconomic normalization, accompanied by unusually high dispersion across asset classes and regions. Global growth decelerated moderately without entering recessionary territory, while disinflation progressed unevenly across economies.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), global growth was estimated at approximately 3.2% in 2025 and 3.1% in 2026, reinforcing a soft-landing scenario as the base case.

For the Latin American investor and business owner, 2025 marked a critical inflection point: persistent uncertainty in the interest rate trajectory combined with increased asset dispersion.

Interest Rate Uncertainty

What Does It Really Mean?

Uncertainty surrounding interest rates is not limited to whether central banks cut rates or not. It encompasses four simultaneous variables: timing, pace, terminal rate, and risk asymmetry.

In 2025, markets faced mixed signals: headline inflation moderated, while core inflation and wage growth remained sticky, and elevated fiscal deficits exerted upward pressure on the term premium.

This explains why bond markets exhibited elevated volatility even during periods when consensus anticipated rate cuts. As a result, the environment required avoiding binary rate bets and instead prioritizing flexible duration structures, while capturing carry and roll-down without reliance on a single macro scenario.

U.S. Dollar Regime Shift

What Is a Currency “Regime Shift”?

A regime shift implies a structural change in the dominant drivers of a currency. Between 2022 and 2024, the U.S. dollar was supported bypositive real rates in the U.S., safe-haven demand amid geopolitical shocks, and relative growth outperformance.

In 2025, this equilibrium began to change due to expectations of monetary easing, structural fiscal deterioration, and greater synchronization of global growth.

The result was a depreciation of the U.S. dollar against developed-market currencies, particularly the euro and the Japanese yen.

For Latin American investors, this shift was critical: a weaker dollar increases the value of non-USD assets in unhedged portfolios, reduces financial pressure in emerging markets, but also increases wealth volatility in the absence of a clear FX policy.

Equities – Concentration Risk (AI as a Dominant Factor)

Nature of the Risk

In 2025, a significant portion of global equity index performance was driven by a small group of mega-cap companies highly exposed to artificial intelligence narratives.

This resulted in: extreme market capitalization concentration, dependence on a single growth engine, elevated sensitivity to negative surprises (rates, regulation, earnings)

From a professional standpoint, this is not a technological risk, but rather a factor risk. Several institutional investors identified early bubble-like characteristics in certain AI segments—not necessarily in the technology itself, but in its pricing.

By year-end 2025, markets reflected:

• A materially weaker USD

• Structural strength in gold as a hedge

• Heightened debate around demanding valuations in technology and AI-related equities