Torsten Slok

Slok was born in 1970 and grew up in Roskilde, Denmark.⁠[1][2]

In 1991 Slok worked as a student employee at Danmarks Nationalbank and later interned at the International Monetary Fund. He earned a master’s degree in economics from the University of Copenhagen in 1994 and studied at Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry in 1995–1996.⁠[1]

In 1998 his doctoral thesis, Essays in Policy-oriented Macroeconomics, was published by the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Economics.⁠[3]

In 2000 Slok, writing as Torsten Sløk, was an economist in the World Economic Studies Division of the International Monetary Fund’s Research Department. Using Mongolia as a case study of monetary policy in a transition economy, he argued that stable money demand supports market-based policy, while stressing the importance of banking-sector and public-administration reform.⁠[4]

At the IMF he also worked on the World Economic Outlook and on China, Hong Kong and Mongolia.⁠[5]

Slok worked briefly at Denmark’s Ministry of Business (Erhvervsministeriet) and at Bank of America, and in 2003 joined the OECD in Paris.⁠[1]

His work at the OECD covered money and finance and structural policy analysis.⁠[5]

In 2005 Slok joined Deutsche Bank, working in research in New York.⁠[1]

Before joining Apollo he spent 15 years on the sell side, where his team was ranked first by Institutional Investor in fixed income and equities for ten years.⁠[5]

In 2012 Slok said the financial crisis had made practitioners more cautious and more attentive to clients’ needs. He described research as providing a framework for understanding the economy and stressed clear communication and teamwork.⁠[1]

In November 2019 Slok, then chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities, published his list of risks to markets for the coming year, putting inequality in wealth, income and access to health care at the top and highlighting the effect of trade disputes on business investment.⁠[6]

In August 2020 Slok joined Apollo as chief economist, leading the firm’s macroeconomic and market analysis.⁠[7]

He is currently a partner and chief economist at the firm.⁠[5]

Slok publishes data-driven analysis of the U.S. economy, inflation and capital markets in The Daily Spark.⁠[8]

The Daily Spark is emailed almost every morning and usually consists of a single sentence and a chart; as of early 2025 it had tens of thousands of subscribers, with more than 500 new sign-ups a week.⁠[2]

On March 1, 2024 Slok argued that the Federal Reserve would not cut rates that year, citing growth that had not clearly slowed, inflation pressures, a tight labor market and easing financial conditions.⁠[9]

On September 18, 2024 the Federal Reserve cut the target range for the federal funds rate by 50 basis points to 4.75% to 5%, contrary to that forecast.⁠[10][9]

On April 19, 2025 Slok laid out a “Voluntary Trade Reset Recession” scenario, putting the probability of a U.S. recession that year at 90%. He then published a 40-page slide deck projecting that container ship arrivals from China would largely stop by mid-May and that layoffs in trucking and retail would follow in late May or early June, and called a trade war “a stagflation shock.”⁠[11][12]

In May 2025, after the United States and China cut tariffs on each other, he lowered his estimate of the probability of a U.S. recession in 2025 to 30%, saying the tail risk of a complete collapse in trade between China and the United States had been removed.⁠[11]

On July 16, 2025 Slok published a note at Apollo Academy titled “AI Bubble Today Is Bigger Than the IT Bubble in the 1990s,” arguing that the top 10 companies in the S&P 500 were more overvalued than they had been in the 1990s.⁠[13]

On June 30, 2026 Slok wrote in The Daily Spark that there were no signs yet of profit margins rising outside the tech sector and that the key issue was how long companies there would need to earn a return on AI; he argued that a mismatch between current earnings expectations and the time firms actually need to generate returns could significantly affect many AI company valuations. He also wrote that if token costs converged toward zero for most AI uses, there would not be enough revenue for all hyperscalers.⁠[14]

In August 2026 Slok argued that upstream profits in the AI value chain depend partly on continued financing of model and application companies that are still losing money, and that whether end customers see a timely return on investment is a key risk to sustaining upstream spending.⁠[15]

On September 27, 2026 Slok suggested that AI agents such as Muse could help households move cash from low-interest checking accounts into higher-yielding ones; if households did so widely, banks could lose much of the low-cost deposit base that supports their lending, with effects on the financial system.⁠[16]

On October 5, 2026 Slok distinguished between labor productivity gains from more capital investment and improvements in total factor productivity. He argued that growth in AI investment and valuations was already visible but that macro productivity data did not yet show corresponding gains from technological progress.⁠[17]

On October 24, 2026 Slok published “No Signs of AI Payoff Outside the Tech Sector” in The Daily Spark, arguing that AI had so far delivered “zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech”: revenue per worker was rising for the “Magnificent Seven” (Mag 7) but flat for the other 493 companies in the S&P 500, profit margins outside tech and overall productivity growth showed no boost from AI, and AI spending was extremely concentrated in a small number of firms. He wrote that AI “does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness,” concluding that “the AI story will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7.”⁠[18]

Apollo Global Management: Official website: https://www.apollo.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

International Monetary Fund: Official website: https://www.imf.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[4]

OECD: Official website: https://www.oecd.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

Deutsche Bank: Official website: https://www.db.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]

University of Copenhagen: Official website: https://www.ku.dk/en (opens in a new window)⁠[20]