The World In A Week – Balancing Act
The focus last week was mainly on the US, which is arguably seen as the new epicentre for the pandemic and, perhaps, the road map for the next phase in this battle. US equities recorded their first…
The World In A Week – Interim Update
There is always an anomaly that appears during a crisis to disrupt markets or economies to an extreme, and the COVID-19 crisis is no exception. Rising production and collapsing demand, due to a…
The World In A Week – Start Of Something New?
It has been 28 days since Boris Johnson delivered his address announcing that the UK will be placed in a state of lockdown. On Thursday, the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, declared that the…
The World In A Week – Interim Update
We previously wrote, just two weeks ago, about the risk of economic forecasts during this period of uncertainty. The unreliability of data during the lockdowns will, in turn, make the forecasts…
The World In A Week – A Rally From Awful To Bad
The last week before the Easter break saw risk assets rally strongly as investors left the haven of cash and re-entered the market. While High Quality Bonds rallied +0.3%, the greatest moves were…
The World In A Week – Interim Update
The ebb and flow of sentiment is critical in the short term. The markets will overreact to both good news and bad. The problem is that data is going to be less reliable than it has ever been and…
The World In A Week – A Week Of Firsts
US jobless numbers surged from 3.3 million the week prior to 6.6 million last week, taking the total to almost 10 million people filing for benefits. Donald Trump responded to these record-breaking…
The World In A Week – Interim Update
Economic data is likely to become increasingly less reliable as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown. We know that the effect on the global economy will be bad, we just do not know how bad. That is…
The World In A Week – Wēijī / 危機
Fittingly for the current environment, the title of this update is the Chinese word for both “crisis” and “opportunity”. While the tragedy of the Coronavirus rages around the world and throws up many…
The World In A Week Interim Update – Apply. Rinse. Repeat.
This week we have seen the US Federal Reserve offer unlimited quantitative policy, along with various other bells and whistles. This is to keep the wheels of monetary policy lubricated; to encourage…
The World In A Week – Contagion
Basic evolutionary theory teaches us that adaptation is the biological mechanism by which humans adjust to changes in their environments. We find ourselves living in a period of great change, and it…
The World In A Week – Interim Update
Policymakers around the globe are turning to their fiscal armouries to meet the economic challenges that the Coronavirus is, and will be, causing. This is a welcome development and as we have…