Facing the ravages of the Great Depression borne out of its own financial crisis, a statesman such as Roosevelt found his place at the vanguard of a new order seeking to redress the imbalances between the three major forces within any economy – the government, corporations and individuals.
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As bearish sentiment spread across financial markets the ‘safe haven’ currencies showed the best performance last year with the US dollar and the yen leading the way.
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Just about everything went wrong for commodity investors last year.
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Writing a quarterly report about Commercial Property has become a bit like Groundhog Day, but in a nice way, with the ‘bricks and mortar’ property unit trusts consistently inching higher every month and last year was no exception.
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For most of last year Bond funds were producing negative returns with an unholy combination of rising Government Bond yields and widening credit spreads.
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The emerging markets are caught in the cross-hairs. Higher US interest rates and a stronger dollar have tightened liquidity and pushed up borrowing costs as well as sucking capital away from the area putting pressure on EM exchange rates precipitating crises in Turkey and Argentina.
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The European growth story has disappointed, Eurozone Q3 GDP growth was 1.7% y/y compared to 2.1% in the previous quarter.
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Buoyed by the Trump tax cuts the economy expanded by 3.5% in the third quarter last year, the strongest back to back quarterly growth since 2014.
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Poor old blighty, it missed out on the global upswing last year but will still suffer in any global slowdown and has the largest ever elephant in the room to contend with, growth and monetary policy for years ahead being dependent on Brexit.
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Last year was challenging, miserable, and ultimately shocking for investors. It was the worst year for a decade with virtually all asset classes losing money and big falls in equity markets during the final quarter of the year.
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