We're open: welcome to the Aurelian Review

Welcome. The charts are drawn, the seal is polished and the kettle is on. The Aurelian Review is open, and I am genuinely glad you are here for the first page.

This is a publication about the economy, money and markets, written for anyone curious about them rather than only for those who work in finance. You do not need a finance degree to read it; a few minutes and a willingness to look at a chart will do.

Why I started it

Most of the economic news we read tells us what happened, while far less of it explains why, or what it means for the people living with the result. A central bank moves a rate, an oil price falls, a valuation is announced, and the interesting question usually sits one step behind the headline.

That step is what I want to write about. Having spent fifteen years looking at capital from different sides, in markets, companies, deals and government, I have come to one conviction that runs through everything here: a model is a structured representation of assumptions, not an answer. Much of the work, in practice, is saying out loud which assumptions are carrying the weight.

What you will find here

Analysis as stories break. When a central bank moves, a policy changes or a market turns, I will explain what happened, why it matters and what it means for you. Each piece follows the same five steps: context, framework, evidence, interpretation and implication. If you are in a hurry, the implication sits in the gold-edged box near the end.

Studies of the trends behind the headlines. Longer pieces when a subject needs more room, with the data and the reasoning laid out in full rather than summarised.

Guides. Plain-language explainers on the ideas that keep coming up, from how a currency peg works to how a valuation is built.

Charts anyone can read. Every piece carries a chart that tells the story at a glance; hover over it, or tap on a phone, and the numbers behind each point appear; press Full screen to see it at its full size.

The occasional video, when a chart is easier to talk through than to describe.

Two promises on the seal

The seal carries two Latin phrases, and they serve as the house rules.

Sine ira et studio, without anger or partiality, is how Tacitus promised to write his history (and I'm a passionate historian). Economics has no shortage of strong opinions, so here the evidence goes first and the conclusion follows it, rather than the other way round.

Ad fontes, back to the sources, was the call of the Renaissance scholars who returned to the original texts. Every figure in the Review comes from an official source, named under the chart. Please check my work: I would rather be corrected than comfortable.

Who is writing

I am Zoran Ninic. By day I work for the Abu Dhabi Government in the tourism sector, where my focus is economic value maximisation and project investment due diligence. I am a CFA and am completing the Executive MBA at London Business School, which reliably sends me home with more questions than I arrived with. The best of them will end up here.

The views in the Review are my own.

Already out

Why the Fed's decisions land in Abu Dhabi looks at the dirham's link to the dollar, why the UAE's Base Rate has followed every Federal Reserve rate change since 2020, and what that has meant for the cost of a home loan. What the Taylor rule says about the Fed now tests a 33-year-old formula against today's interest rates. Both are a fair example of what the Review sets out to do: one clear question, a chart anyone can read and the official numbers behind it.

How to join in

Subscribe, and new analysis will arrive in your inbox as it is published, free of charge.

Join the discussion: every piece has a comment section where members can add a view, challenge a number or suggest the next question.

Share a piece with one person who would enjoy it. That, in practice, is how small publications grow.

Send me your questions, on LinkedIn or by replying to any email. If a question puzzles several of you, it will probably become a guide.

Thank you for being here at the start. Now, to the first chart!

Zoran