Teams of analysts at dozens of the largest banks have released their 2026 strategies in recent weeks. We have studied the main ones and prepared a two-part guide for you. The first is about what Wall Street expects from the world's largest economies in 2026. And in the second part next week we will tell you what analysts forecast for the main asset classes and how they advise managing your portfolio next year.

Today, after the next meeting of the board of directors on the rate (it was reduced by 50 basis points to 16%), the Central Bank held a traditional press conference - it had to be postponed by several hours due to Vladimir Putin’s Direct Line. Briefly, the main thing that the head of the regulator, Elvira Nabiullina, spoke about. Today, the Central Bank was choosing between maintaining the rate (16.5%) and reducing it by 50 and 100 bp.

Today's direct line from Vladimir Putin lasted the traditional four hours for these events and was reduced to a long-established ritual of communication with journalists and people, represented by rare inclusions from the field, sometimes recorded. This time, the president sprinkled less economic statistics, but literally none of the numbers mentioned can still be taken “as is” without additional research.

The Central Bank, as expected, reduced the rate from 16.5% per annum to 16%, the regulator said in a statement. This happened against the backdrop of a slowdown in price growth: by December 15, annual inflation fell to 5.78%, if calculated using the Central Bank’s methodology based on weekly dynamics, or to 6.08%, if determined using the Ministry of Economic Development’s methodology based on average daily data.

Russian Railways is in a severe financial crisis - more than a trillion rubles are needed to save the state-owned company. Despite this, Russian Railways spent 193 billion rubles to purchase a skyscraper in Moscow City from partner Arkady Rotenberg, who sold apartments to women close to Putin. The Russian government is discussing a rescue plan for Russian Railways, for which the state may be forced to spend 1.3 trillion rubles.

The Donald Trump administration announced the suspension of the green card lottery program following the shooting at Brown University and the murder of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. The police linked the two crimes. “At the direction of President Trump, I am immediately directing USCIS to suspend the DV-1 program to ensure that no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous initiative,” US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said .

The European Union was unable to agree on a reparation loan to Ukraine using the frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank and will continue to finance Ukraine at its own expense for now. But Russian assets are frozen even deeper Christian Lue/Unsplash