Interest rate cuts and inflation were the focus of markets in 2024.
While this still remains the case, there has been quite of lot of movement in foreign exchange rates, and
equity markets have continued to climb with very large valuations by historic standards.
This is despite large government departments driving debt higher.
After a volatile first half to the year, mainly due to geopolitical issues, businesses are now beginning to prepare their budgets for 2026.
Looking at the bigger picture, Managing Director of Treasury Solutions John Finn said the US will "be the story" in 2026.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, he addressed the potential of a repeat of the 2008 crash as private credit is growing, indebtedness is high and AI capital expenditure spend is not sustainable.
"The numbers are astronomical too, they actually don't seem to make sense, so that's going to be a risk," said Mr Finn.
"The state of government borrowing in general, the USowed $5 trillion in debt in 2000, they now owe $35 trillion, they haven't run a surplus since 2001, they're spending more than they take in every year," he said.
"They have a lot of debt to refinance next year, over $10 trillion, and they'll be refinancing that at higher interest rates as well. So from that perspective, that's huge," he said.
He also highlighted concerns over tariffs, the replacement of the Fed chair, the impact on the dollar and on the US interest rate which all have the potential to increase volatility again.
However, Mr Finn forecasts Ireland is in a position to withstand a US crash, but warns that government borrowing is still high.
"I think we're in good shape here on a number of fronts, the banks are in completely different position than they were in 2008, they're sitting on loads of cash now, far more deposits than loans and that in itself is a big plus," said Mr Finn.
"I think government borrowing is still high, but personal borrowing and corporate borrowing is low. In fact, corporates here in Ireland owe about a quarter of what they owed in 2008 at the peak, so less debt and less risk," he added.
"The only thing you've got to watch is the Government, do we have a surplus or do we not really? In other words, you've got the one-off income from the multinationals that feels a little bit like housing taxes that are not repeatable, but if you spend money that's repeating every year and you don't have repeating revenues, you can run into trouble and that's probably the one thing that the Government will want to watch," he explained.
