Torsten Slok has been turning heads on Wall Street with his charts for years, since he was at Deutsche Bank and continuing on into his current role at Apollo Global Management. His market analysis earned him a profile in Bloomberg, and he was one of the first prominent voices to warn of a potential AI bubble in stocks in the summer of 2025.
Now he sees an uncanny resemblance—almost an uncanny valley—between the inflation mountain range of the 1970s and ’80s and the inflation wave of 2021, plus what may lie ahead for the U.S. economy. In his Daily Spark newsletter on Aug. 31, Slok noted the upside pressure on inflation and inflation expectations from tariffs; dollar depreciation; and growing disagreement within the Federal Open Market Committee about how to balance rising inflation with slowing employment. (In a note titled “Ghosts of 2007,” Bank of America Research observed that the Fed has rarely cut rates against a backdrop of rising inflation.)
