Investors who briefly embraced a “Europe is back” narrative in early 2025 are now treating 2026 as a proof-of-delivery year rather than a story year. The first-half outperformance of European equities versus the United States was powered by an unusual alignment of catalysts: Europe’s pivot to higher defence spending, Germany’s break with its traditional fiscal restraint, and a period when U.S. tariff risk under President Donald Trump made American assets feel less dependable.

As trade war anxiety ebbed, markets reverted toward their long-standing equilibrium, as U.S. indices regained leadership, Europe kept rising but lagged again, and the euro stalled below the earlier 2025 highs.

Europe is on track to absorb an unprecedented volume of liquefied natural gas in 2026, even as the world’s LNG production capacity accelerates sharply. In its latest quarterly Gas Market Report, the International Energy Agency projects European LNG imports rising to about 185 billion cubic metres this year, topping the prior record of roughly 175 bcm in 2025, another marker of how decisively the region has reoriented its gas system since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The IEA’s broader message is that the long-anticipated “LNG wave” is no longer theoretical: global LNG supply is expected to expand by more than 7% in 2026, the fastest growth rate since 2019. The agency attributes most of the incremental supply, around 40 bcm in 2026, to North America.

Argentina, a significant player in the global lithium market and the fastest-growing producer of lithium, is exploring the possibility of imposing a new tax on lithium producers and mandating a reserved portion of production for national battery projects. The goal behind these potential measures is to tap into the profits of lithium companies and utilize those funds for crucial infrastructure development.