Autumn but no fall

28 October 2025

Capital markets started the week calmer than they have been, and are ending with yet more all-time-highs. However, investors remain uneasily positive. The mid-week saw more wobbles, and this patch of increased volatility could...

Bounce and brace

22 October 2025

Global risk assets sagged this week. Initially, stocks bounced a little from last Friday’s US sell-off, after Trump appeared to do a customary TACO turn on Sunday. But, investment portfolios are now closer to where we started...

Volatility on the horizon

16 October 2025

Stock markets keep pushing at all-time highs earlier this week, but with less enthusiasm than a few weeks ago. Then, late on Friday, a renewed Trump tariff threat against China’s rare earth export restrictions was enough to...

Nothing shuts down the stock markets

8 October 2025

Global stocks bumped up this week, recovering all of last week’s losses and then some. That is despite a US government shutdown that shows no sign of being quickly resolved. Previous funding gaps have hurt the world’s largest...

Running out of steam

29 September 2025

Global stock prices have dropped this week, with most regional markets ending down. Some of this is end-of-quarter rebalancing of institutional portfolios. Institutional investors typically adjust their portfolios back to the...

Slowdown? What slowdown?

19 September 2025

Rate cuts and record highs for markets this week. As wholly expected, the US Federal Reserve voted to decrease interest rates by 0.25 percentage points to 4% (the effective rate is about 4.1%), and signalled further cuts before...

Markets’ outlook preference turns positive

12 September 2025

It has been another slightly confusing week for some investors. Markets mulled over last Friday’s weaker than expected US jobs report, but stocks kept climbing higher virtually everywhere. There were two big market action stories:...

Pause for thought

8 September 2025

The ‘Back to School’ week often gets a lot of attention. Traders return from their holidays and reassess their market outlooks. So, after the summer’s strong equity rally, it is no surprise that investors are doing a bit...

Refuelling pause in markets

29 August 2025

Markets have had another relatively quiet week. The news, on the other hand, was full of debt panic and more Trump destabilisation. As noted in the past few weeks, investors seem to have become desensitised to these events. The...

Market leaders taking late summer break

22 August 2025

The Bloomberg World stock market index has gained 0.5% for the week as we write, bond prices are mixed (UK yields are up). Underneath that, US large cap stocks did less well, while China and the UK have risen, to the point where...