News & Update

A Budget in October is unusual, but there are two main reasons why the Chancellor’s performance marginally pre-empted Halloween this year. The first is that we are now in the new cycle of Autumn Budgets and Spring Statements, the première of the latter having been made on 13 March....

For a number of months now, the world’s largest survey of fund managers has observed that, when asked for their greatest financial market fear, the most cited response has been a ‘trade war’. There is a significant slug of rationality for this....

In the global investment strategy calendar there is only one period of time that can compare with the turn of the year in terms of importance… and that is the back to school period....

Despite the usual weather downers such as the tennis at Wimbledon or the start of the school holidays, July was a warm month pretty much anywhere you looked in the northern hemisphere. Global stock markets were hot too, led by the out-of-favour emerging markets and Continental Europe. Funny how all throughout June and July...

Major macro factors affecting the economy and financial markets over the next six to twelve months include trade policy, interest rates, earnings growth, Federal Reserve (Fed) policy, and geopolitical uncertainty....

I thought I would use Billy Connolly’s witticism about his homeland to highlight the essential debate in financial markets at the moment. During the last month, the UK’s most-quoted stock market index – helped by a rising oil price boosting energy sector shares – reached an all-time high....

So how was February for you? For many it would have been a bit of a shock with the global indices in aggregate posting their first monthly loss since the autumn of 2016, which is a long time ago. The real question however is whether this heralds a new downward trend, whether this is...

Many years ago I was told that if I found myself uttering the phrase that ‘investment was easy’ I should sell all my outstanding positions and go and sit in a darkened room and have a think about it all. These words came back to me a few days ago when I came across...

I pointed out in the most recent Investment Services Quarterly that over the past fifteen or twenty years October had a slightly rude reputation as a bad month for equity market investors. October 2017 will go down in the history books as not only being a positive month for almost all global investors, but...

What were you doing on the 5 July 2007? I cannot remember either, but the history books tell us that this was the last date when the Bank of England raised interest rates (by a quarter of a percentage to 5.75%). Since this point, interest rates have only fallen, including the most recent August...