India and China: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?
Separated by the peaks of the Himalayas, China and India are two countries as vast and spectacular as the mountains that separate them. Both are home to well over a billion people and both have their challenges and opportunities alike. For investors, both countries are major constituents of the emerging markets equity indices, but recently […]
Summary
In December, central banks all but confirmed that the rising interest rate cycle was over. Markets had already spent most of November pricing that in anyway, but who was leading who is a moot point. Either way, the ending of interest rate rises and the anticipation of rate cuts should prove a helpful backdrop for asset classes. […]
Market outlook
Has morning broken or is it Groundhog Day? And there we have it. In the blink of a metaphorical eye, another year has passed. I started the Investment Strategy at the beginning of last year with the headline “Hope springs eternal” and went on to say that I hoped the year ahead would be a […]
The rise and rise of the Magnificent Seven
Magnificent who? These are the mega-cap US tech companies, not the star-filled 1960’s Western starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson, among others. The modern-day Magnificent Seven are Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google to you and me), Amazon, Nvidia, Meta (Facebook to you and me) and Tesla. These seven companies have been dominating both US […]
Do you hear the people sing?
There is a life about to start, when tomorrow comes! Across the continents of the world, voters head to the polls in unprecedented scale in 2024. The political landscape across the globe has the potential to change significantly. After years of a widening economic gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots”, will voters choose ever-more […]
Summary
Central banks have stopped marching forward at least; signalled pauses in the relentless rise of policy rates and the tone of comments being released suggest, more probably, that a peak has now been reached. Cracks in the US banking sector look contained for now but concerns about the state of the US regional banks and […]
Market outlook
Don’t look back into the Sun Alas, the summer season passes us by for another year. The leaves are starting to turn brown; the summer holidays seem more and more distant, the evenings gather darker and Strictly is back on the TV. After a lightweight summer with too much rain in the UK and too […]
Japan
There is some momentum being built for investors in Japan following decades battling deflation, negative interest rates and investor disappointment. First, the equity market is rising strongly, being up, year to date, by 25% in local currency terms, as measured by the TSE Topix. This relative strength has been dampened for investors in the UK […]
Summary
Central banks remain on their relentless march – pushing up interest rates in the battle against the persistence of consumer price inflation. This has already exposed cracks in the banking sector, and recent survey data goes from weak (service sector) to very weak (manufacturing sector) suggesting a slowing economic backdrop. In China, its economic reopening […]
Market Outlook
Arctic Monkeys, then Guns N’ Roses, then Sir Elton Having been a supporter of the team from the red side of Manchester since my early teen’s and having lived in the south-east of England for the majority of my life, I find nothing ironic in saying I’m a big fan of Glastonbury, despite never actually […]