Heavy defeats for US Republicans in New Jersey and Virginia and a shrunken winning margin in Tennessee have triggered a spate of Congressional retirements and talk that Donald Trump's second presidency is already a "lame duck". This has prompted market speculation that he could take another populist turn - adding pressure on the Federal Reserve and posting out stimulus cheques.

Michael Redmond, Medley Advisors' US and Fed analyst is sceptical. "It just makes it really difficult to control the House when there's this level of unhappiness and it's such a thin margin already and you have some people who are looking for the exits," he says in this podcast. "So that probably means that Trump can't get through some of these ideas that he's talking about ... The Fed won't really need to be delivering more easing next year but, with all these elements politically and economically, the risks are definitely skewed to the downside for interest rates next year".

In this edited version of their weekly meeting, Medley analysts discuss this, lessons from Trump whisperers from Brazil, China's coming economic planning conference and a second wave of Chinese disinflation for Europe.

In order the speakers are Michael Redmond, Tim Jones, Pepijn Bergsen, Mario Lima, Brian Jackson and Fernando Posadas.

Is this week's correction to the stock market's seven-month streak a pause or a first puncture of the "AI bubble"?

Medley Advisors analysts held their weekly meeting just after the first jitters and rally following Nvidia's earnings report but before the aggresive intra-day sell-off on 20 November. They discussed the meaning and causes of the correction, the impact of AI on Federal Reserve policy thinking, and the latest developments in US trade policy.

In this abridged and edited summary of the meeting, the speakers are (in order) Dan Schwartz, Michael Redmond, Pepijn Bergsen, Fernando Posadas and Brian Jackson.

"I don't think the bubble talk is going away," said Dan Schwartz. "The nature of the media has changed so much that you're going to hear a lot more of these voices ... If you go back to the Nasdaq bubble, think about who were the biggest voices on tech - it was probably Maria Bartiromo and Ron Insana on CNBC and they were cheerleaders for the sector. Today, you have a million trolls on the internet saying 'I told you so' or being champions of the technology".

Democratic landslides in US state and city elections this week raised the possibility that Republicans could lose control of Congress entirely in the 2026 midterms.

At the same time, the Supreme Court began public deliberations on legal challenges to the use of IEEPA emergency powers to impose tariffs without Congressional authority.

Now on the backfoot after successful Democratic campaigns against high prices, will President Donald Trump be forced to leave the Federal Reserve alone to apply mildly restrictive policy? Could tariffs be under threat? Will foreign governments cowed by nine months of US unilateralism, start to smell weakness?

These questions were raised at the Medley Advisors weekly analysts' meeting. In this edited podcast of the meeting, the speakers, in order, are Fernando Posadas, Michael Redmond, Mario Lima, Brian Jackson, Tim Jones, Dan Schwartz and Pepijn Bergsen.

"This administration bases a huge amount of their foreign policy on the ability to put tariffs in place," says Brian Jackson. "They have plenty of other powers
ready to go if they lose IEEPA specifically".