Category: Investment Outlook
Central bank hawks determined to defang inflation
15 September 2023The European Central Bank (ECB) raised rates yesterday, with the majority of its Governing Council members concerned that the inflation parasite may be alive for a while longer. Of course, parasites can continue to be robust while...
Energy in focus – oil prices up and an ill wind for renewables
8 September 2023Markets have been generally quiet at the start of September but energy is again becoming an issue for equity and credit markets. Oil prices have risen since the start of the summer, with Brent crude having bounced along a bottom...
The US back at the top of the class
1 September 2023Summer is officially over, but we are none the wiser regarding the direction of the economy. Or are we? Well, we quite likely are, but just a bit and not enough to know if next month’s equity markets will be higher or lower...
Transcontinental growth divergence
25 August 2023We don’t seem to be able to get away from writing about how bond yields have been driving equity markets due to their influence on underlying valuation dynamics. We wrote about it last week, on many occasions over the past two...
Bonds are back
18 August 2023Both equity and bond markets have had another rather difficult week and with it August has mostly erased the positive returns of July. From the medium-term perspective, UK-listed equities are nearly back down to the level at which...
Summer markets
11 August 2023On the face of it, the week contained many of the news headlines that market optimists had been waiting for: rapidly falling US inflation and a cooling jobs market. In the UK, news that four of its major high street lenders were...
Expect the unexpected
4 August 2023July turned out to be another good month for portfolio investors as markets rose across the board, leaving only commodities and property investors in the red for the year. For more details on the month’s returns picture, please...
Rate rises bouncing off ‘Teflon’ markets
28 July 2023Equity markets continue to be buoyant after the rate rises in Europe and the US. Some market participants have been calling this the ‘Teflon market’ because nothing sticks to it. We would rather think of it as a sort of running...
Another inflation driver turns over
21 July 2023This week’s markets have, yet again, revolved around inflation, wages and profit margins. In the UK, we finally got a little of the good news that has been stoking US markets. Inflation wise, June turns out to have been not...
Core inflation slowdown equals an upbeat week for equity markets
15 July 2023We wrote at the end of last week that markets had come to expect another round of significant interest rate rises from central banks, and that risk assets such as equities were likely to come under some pressure. At the end of...