French President Emmanuel Macron seems likely to defeat Marine Le Pen, leader of the populist-chauvinist National Rally, in the runoff election. That would be a relief — but what’s already happened in this race is disturbing regardless. Macron is essentially all that remains of the French political centre, which is destined to shrink until it finds a way to answer ...

To wipe out superheroes, the villain of the Pixar movie “The Incredibles” had a fiendish plot: He would make them ubiquitous. “When everyone’s super,” the villain named Syndrome opined, “no one will be.” The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has no such diabolical goals. Yet it’s at risk of making Japan stocks just as irrelevant with its much-hyped but disappointing market ...

  Investors are used to hearing company executives on earnings calls and in presentations sugarcoat the performance of their business. So it’s surprising when there’s a straight-up admission that “despite our best efforts, the moats that protect this company are not particularly deep.” When the speaker is JPMorgan Chase & Co Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon in his ...