As Kenny Rogers sang, gamblers have to know when to hold them. So, too, do central banks.

Policymakers at the US Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan, Bank of England, People’s Bank of China, and Sweden’s Riksbank held interest rates steady this week as monetary policy found itself in a poker game with global economic uncertainty. Unfortunately, no one has an ace card up their sleeve (although Fed Chair Jerome Powell hinted he has a couple of rate cuts to play at some point this year).

Different Circumstances, Same Decision

Obviously, not every central bank is dealt the same set of economic considerations.

China, for example, is trying to prop up growth with stimulus. The nation saw modest 4% year-over-year retail sales growth in January and February, up from 3.7% in December. But its national consumer price index fell last month by 0.7% — yep, negative inflation (also known as deflation) — and officials revised their annual CPI target down to “around 2%” from 3%. If inflation remains weak, officials have already said they could start easing to stimulate consumer spending in the hope of meeting Beijing’s ambitious 5% growth target this year.

Sweden’s central bank, meanwhile, was more cautious, announcing Thursday that its key rate would “remain going forward.” Despite “substantial global turbulence” created by the US threatening international tariffs, the Riksbank said a dramatic uptick in EU defense spending could balance out trade risks and leave the economy in a holding pattern, hence its own unmoved position.

As for those tariffs, just about every central bank had its own euphemism — the Bank of Japan, which is expected to hike rates at some point this year to guard against rising consumer prices, went with the “evolving situation regarding trade.” But no matter the economic cards they’ve been dealt, policymakers across the board essentially said they want to wait for a clearer global economic picture:

• The Bank of England, for its part, is stuck in between spiralling inflation, which reached a 10-month high of 3% in January — and paltry growth, which registered 0.1% in the fourth quarter. It acknowledged its difficult position on Thursday, stating “monetary policy will need to continue to remain restrictive for sufficiently long” to deal with the uncertainty of global trade policy.
• Federal Reserve officials suggested Wednesday a similar, though not nearly as sluggish, scenario is in the cards for the US: Economic growth, they said, will now come in at 1.7%, down from a 2.1% projection in December, and prices will rise 2.7%, up from a 2.5% forecast. Powell said inflation has started to move up “partly in response to tariffs” but the Fed still expects two rate cuts this year even with the uncertainty.

The Outsider: Somebody has to break ranks and, on Thursday, that was Switzerland’s central bank. Swiss National cut its key interest rate by a quarter percentage point to 0.25%, in an expected move. It followed a jumbo 50 basis-point cut in December and marked the fifth successive cut since March 2024. But, unlike its Western peers, inflation in Switzerland registered at a barely there 0.3% annually in February, the lowest in four years. A strong Swiss franc has made imported goods from the Eurozone cheaper, but even the Swiss could soon enter a holding pattern, as Swiss National said the “backdrop of increased trade and geopolitical uncertainties” may introduce new risks.

Amid a not-so-good, pretty terrible year, Nvidia’s GTC conference this week may not have been the party that the company was expecting.

The conference, yearly since 2009, offers a glimpse into the present and the future of the concentric artificial intelligence and semiconductor industries. This year’s event comes just weeks after the bombshell DeepSeek moment, the acceleration of a global trade war, and a broader market rout. So where does the preeminent semiconductor maker go from here?

No Inference Indifference

Nvidia — whose share price is down over 14% year-to-date — spent the week attempting to make one thing clear: The AI revolution is continuing apace, and Nvidia is fortifying its position at the forefront of it. Which for Nvidia means fighting a two-front war. On one front, the company is focused on shoring up its supply chains against potential shocks. On the other front, it’s focused on staying one step ahead of the AI industry’s shifting demand toward chipstacks wired for “inference” models, such as those offered by Chinese upstart sensation DeepSeek, and beyond the training chip stacks that Nvidia currently dominates.

In the AI race so far, most compute demand has been for training new models. According to Barclays, Nvidia is expected to control nearly 100% of the chip market for the training space moving forward. But now that many models have been trained, the industry is rapidly turning toward “inference” models. While techies can explain the subtle nuances of what that means, laymen simply need to know it requires a different chipstack (and much more power) than training. And it’s here that Nvidia will suddenly face competition — and new opportunity:

• According to analysts at Morgan Stanley, some 75% of compute power demand from US data centers will be for inference AI models in the coming years.
• That means a massive shift in investment. According to Barclays analysts, capital expenditures for inference in the largest and most advanced AI models will leapfrog capex for AI training within two years, jumping from a projected $122 billion this year to $200 billion in 2026. Barclays analysts also project that Nvidia will only be able to serve roughly 50% of the growing market for inference chipstacks.

At the conference this week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argued that “almost the entire world got [the DeepSeek moment] wrong.” While the Chinese startup trained its model using a remarkably scant chipstack, running its model will spark more demand for compute power. And rest assured, he said, the latest chip the company debuted this week, named after famed astronomer Vera Rubin, is perfect for the job. Investors didn’t exactly buy the pitch; shares fell 1% earlier this week after Huang’s keynote speech (though have since clawed back the losses).

Born in the USA: On the supply chain front, Huang told the Financial Times in an interview Wednesday that the company plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the next four years to base its supply chain in the US as much as possible. That’s because the company fears that its relationship with critical supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could be imperiled by growing Chinese aggression toward Taiwan, just as China-based Huawei is growing into a true Nvidia competitor. TSMC, for its part, recently announced a $100 billion investment in its growing facilities in Arizona, which was kickstarted by a $65 billion investment from the Biden administration.

If $6.1 billion isn’t worthy of a patented Mike Breen Baaaaaaaang! — maybe even an ultra-rare double Baaaaaaaang! — then we don’t know what else would be.

That’s the price that the Boston Celtics just sold for, in a deal announced Thursday that marks the highest price for a team paid in the history of American sports. But one question lingers: Why would the ownership group of the reigning champs want to cash out now?

Not So On the Moneyball

Two major developments are set to shape the NBA in the coming years. Next year marks the beginning of the league’s 11-year media rights deal with ESPN, NBC, and Amazon — a massive increase from its current broadcast agreements. Meanwhile, last year marked the beginning of a new collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players union (the league splits all revenue roughly 50/50 between players and owners).

For non-sports fans, the agreement sets the financial rules for team building, and this latest contract, set to run through the 2029-2030 season, makes it very, very expensive to maintain a high-payroll roster. And the Celtics didn’t exactly win a championship on a Moneyball budget. Which means the team’s next ownership group — led by private-equity firm Symphony Technology Group co-founder William Chisholm — will have to continue paying big bucks to retain the team’s championship core:

• Unlike the NHL and NFL, which force teams to operate under a hard salary cap, the NBA’s system is a little looser. While there is technically a salary cap — set this season at around $141 million — teams can blow past it, so long as ownership is willing to pay a so-called luxury tax to the league (half of which then gets redistributed to the owners whose teams stayed below the tax threshold).
• The latest agreement is especially punitive compared with older editions, designed largely to discourage egregious over-spending from the league’s new crop of multi-billionaire owners (we’re looking at you, Steve Ballmer). It introduces additional taxes if teams blow past a “first apron” threshold, set at $178 million, and again past a “second apron” threshold, set at $188 million, with even more punitive taxes triggered when paying luxury taxes in three out of four successive years.

Flagrant Foul: With roughly $193 million in guaranteed player contracts this season and a stunning $225 million in contracts on the books for next season (and nearly $1 billion in contracts over the next few seasons overall), the Celtics are firmly a “second apron” tax team. This year, ownership will pay around $52 million in luxury taxes, and next year, it will likely pay double that after triggering the so-called “repeater” tax, according to The Athletic’s calculations (that’s still cheaper than United Mortgage CEO Matt Ishbia’s Phoenix Suns, which will pay a $152 million tax bill this season… while likely missing the playoffs). The Celtic’s soon-to-be-former ownership group, led by Wyc Grousbeck, bought the team back in 2003 at a valuation of just $360 million. Two championships later, their tenure is looking like (excuse us, please) a slam dunk.