Category: Investment Outlook
Lock-down, Open-up
1 May 2020In April, the virus ended the lives of over 190,000 people across the world. Of those, 13% were in the United Kingdom, nearly 25,000. The UK has been one of the worst affected countries during this pandemic. The US has suffered...
Trial and error
24 April 2020After making a cameo appearance in the build-up to March’s COVID-19 market crash, this week saw oil return in dramatic fashion to reclaim the spotlight. This time the performance veered almost into parody, with the oil price...
Lifting lockdown remains a delicate balancing act
17 April 2020The post-Easter week brought continued relief for long-term investors, with a consolidation of the recovery from previous weeks followed by reacceleration towards the end of the week. That said, the continued strength of markets...
Fading threat of financial crisis re-opens old divides
9 April 2020These “strange times we live in” are even stranger for those of us working in and around capital markets. Despite the COVID-19 death toll rising to horrifying and previously unthinkable highs, stock markets staged another...
Unprecedented quarter or calm before the storm?
3 April 2020This week marks the end of the first quarter of 2020. Rarely if ever does it happen that one news story swamps all else as much as the coronavirus pandemic has, but in the future we probably will not remember much else about the...
Government ordered recession
20 March 2020Just like the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus itself, the rate of policy change over the last few weeks has been astounding. A week ago, Boris Johnson and co. were content to isolate the sick, have the public wash their hands...
Disorderly divestments create confusing market dynamics
12 March 2020Last week could be characterised as an “orderly” repricing of equity markets to the consequences of COVID-19 disruptions. This week has seen second-order market dynamics, driving valuations down to levels which do not seem...
Coronavirus market update – ramping up countermeasures can be scary
6 March 2020Since our last update a week ago, market dynamics have developed very much along the lines we outlined as our expectation. The US Federal Reserve has taken the lead and lowered US interest rates by 0.5% to provide additional monetary...
COVID-19 and the reaction of markets to pandemic fears
26 February 2020Global equity markets have taken a significant hit this week, as investors started to take news of COVID-19 spreading beyond China to the rest of the world more seriously. We thought it would be a good time to consider the historical...
Bubble trouble
21 February 2020Compared to last week, there have been few changes to the big picture narrative: Thanks to the virus containment efforts enacted by its government, China’s labour force is only now slowly returning to work following an unusually...