Category: Investment Outlook
Market resilience in face of Bitcoin crash
21 May 2021Beyond the directly virus-related stories, the week’s news has been dominated by cryptocurrency shenanigans and the return of outright war in the Middle East. Cryptos are the “Reality TV” version of markets – hugely fascinating...
Market vertigo galore
14 May 2021Last week we wrote how the ‘sell in May and go away’ maxim has historically not shown much merit for investors. At the end of this week, some of our readers may look back at those sentences ruefully. Markets have certainly...
Sell in May and go away?
7 May 2021The traditional stock market adage of ‘sell in May and go away’ is back in vogue again this year, after the first four months of 2021 brought healthy returns to investors with equity exposure. Of course, historic return observations...
Doubling of earnings leaves markets cold
30 April 2021After last week’s lull in global equity markets, most regions recovered their previous highs this week, albeit in somewhat lacklustre trading patterns. Just as there were several reasons why markets were in a bad mood last week,...
‘Risk on’ pauses while the real world keeps accelerating
23 April 2021Equity markets finally paused in their upward trend this week, with the most speculative assets like Bitcoin experiencing their first serious setback since February. It was hard to pin the cause on any one specific development,...
New bond news gives green light for equity investors
16 April 2021We usually start by summarising equity market action over the course of the week. This week, developments in the bond markets may be of more significance for investors, over the fact that equities continued to do well. On Thursday,...
Bond markets signal economic optimism
9 April 2021Following a strong first quarter for equity investors worldwide, the second quarter is off to a good start as well, with most global stock markets already up by a few percentage points. While the sense that stock markets are potentially...
Tug of war – bonds vs. equities
19 March 2021Next week will mark the anniversary of the turning point of the 2020 COVID stock market crash. Investors looking at their one-year portfolio returns may well be astonished to find double-digit return figures, ranging from around...
Recalibrations
12 March 2021Stock markets around the world have had another choppy week, but this time there was more up than down across the board and bonds yields stopped their upwards trend – at least for a while. The general upward trend notwithstanding,...
Stock markets are finding they cannot have it both ways
5 March 2021Another week of bond market price falls has pushed ten-year government bond yields upwards everywhere except Japan. The US ten-year yield experienced the biggest rise of the developed world, up almost 20 basis points (0.2%) since...