The World In A Week – Interim Update
They just keep on coming. The latest in stimulus packages, at a modest €130 billion, comes courtesy of Germany. This is for Germany rather than the Eurozone and was much larger than expected, with…
The World In A Week – Lockdown Wind-down
The last week saw a broad risk-on sentiment emerge, with global Equities as measured by MSCI ACWI return +2.1% in GBP Terms. This was driven by Japanese and European Equities, while US Equities…
The World In A Week – Interim Update
News flow is beginning to contain something other than easing of lockdowns and vaccines. Economies around the world are beginning to re-open, ahead of the schedules that were first announced back in…
The World In A Week – Crunch Time
Tensions are running high. The balance between keeping economies locked down in order to protect the health services, and the desire to loosen lockdown measures in order to lessen the long-term…
The World In A Week – Interim Update
It is happening again. President Donald Trump has been busy with his Twitter account this week and the focus of his attention is China. Trump’s increasingly critical comments of China could be a…
The World In A Week – Schools Out
A recent rally in equity markets has seen the S&P 500 only down by -2.6% in 2020 in Sterling terms. However, the FTSE All-Share remains the poorest performing equity asset class; down -23.0% for…
The World In A Week – Interim Update
We knew it was coming, but that did not stop the market from overreacting to what is undeniably a certainty. The UK economy shrank at the fastest monthly rate on record during March, due to the…
The World In A Week – Phoney War
Last week saw a moderate rise in the value of risk assets with the FTSE All Share up +0.65% and the MSCI All Country World Index down -0.36% in GBP terms, as the value of Sterling rose against the…
The World In A Week – Interim Update
A week that has been punctuated by uncertainty and conjecture. As we get to the end of the second three-week lockdown period in the UK, headlines are full of rumour. No one knows what the effect of…
The World In A Week – The End Of The Beginning
Boris Johnson returned to no. 10 in full capacity last week after successfully defeating the coronavirus. Boris returns to a torn party, split by those in favour of easing lockdown restrictions and…
The World In A Week – Interim Update
US GDP fell 1.2% quarter-on-quarter; however, you may have seen the media run with headlines that stated growth falling by 4.8%. It seems pointless to annualise the data at this point, as one thing…
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…