Towards the tail-end of July, the Commerce Department reported that Gross Domestic Product (also known as GDP), or the total value of goods and services produced in the US, increased at an annual pace of 4.1% in this year’s second quarter. As expected, President Trump took a victory lap around these numbers, which were the highest GDP growth results since 2014. (However, lost in the fanfare was the fact that the first quarter GDP number was revised down from 2.9% to 2.3%.)

In March, Evergreen outlined our near- and long-term concern for an escalating trade war in The Trump Trade Tirade. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it seems as if the worst has come is coming to fruition.

Given the spectacle that played out in Singapore at the beginning of this week, it’s easy to forget the state of uncertainty that markets and individuals lived in at times last summer when Kim Jong-un and President Trump traded nuclear war intimidations.

A recurring theme in various EVAs over the years is the importance of the yield curve. Sorry, I know a term like that can literally throw non-professional investors—i.e., those with a real life—for a curve. But, unlike with so many human relationships, it’s NOT complicated.

Have you ever wondered what causes recessions and their close cousins, bear markets? In this month’s Gavekal Evergreen Virtual Adviser (EVA), my good friends Charles Gave and Will Denyer attempt to answer that question, one that has vexed economists and even Federal Reserve officials for decades.