Progress?

25 February 2019

We prognosticated in January that we thought it likely that the impossible US President Trump would reach a trade deal with China before the hapless UK prime minister would achieve a constructive divorce settlement with the EU....

Investment perspectives for different Brexit outcomes

18 February 2019

After another week of fairly positive market action, the pattern of last year’s global stock market sell-off and ongoing recovery this year is beginning to look more and more like the previous correction episodes of 2013 and...

Is 2019’s market recovery beginning to stutter?

8 February 2019

After one of the worst Decembers for global investors since the Great Depression, followed by the best January since 1987, February has started not too badly for investors. While up overall, the 7th week of the 2019 stock market...

Turnaround?

1 February 2019

The first month of 2019 is over already and the new year has brought quite a remarkable turnaround for investors compared to the last month of 2018. Global equity markets have recovered to the tune of 7%, but most other asset...

Market absurdities?

25 January 2019

The global stock market recovery rally has entered its sixth consecutive week and there has been plenty of incredulity expressed across markets. How can this market rebound carry on beyond the initial recovery when the economic...

Markets looking ahead

18 January 2019

The New Year’s stock market recovery rally we wrote about last week has continued, to the surprise of many who are observing unprecedented political shambles on either side of the Atlantic. The UK appeared to be descending into...

Substantial but fragile New Year recovery

11 January 2019

While the UK public were stunned and distracted by the live constitutional drama between parliament and government over Brexit, equity markets continued their New Year's recovery rally. Since the pre-Christmas lows, Global stock...

Year-end turbulences heralding difficult 2019?

4 January 2019

Happy New Year and here's to a more joyful 2019 for investors! As our 2018 table of asset class returns below shows, 2018 brought even less joy for investors worldwide than we had expected. The only consolation is that it came...

A Turbulent Start to the Holidays

21 December 2018

We wrote about our outlook for 2019 last week. After that slightly lengthy read, we thought a shorter note discussing what has caused market behaviour would be helpful. So, this week all eyes were on the US Federal Reserve's...

Roller-coaster Advent

7 December 2018

The news of a 90-day trade truce between presidents Trump and Xi's was widely welcomed as the most that could be expected outcome of their much-anticipated dinner conversation at the fringes of the G20 summit last weekend in Argentina....