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Markets have continued their strong and broad-based start to the year. US threats on Greenland cooled a little into the end of the week, allowing regional politics to take focus. Japan’s Prime Minister announced a snap election next month, which weakened the...

Global stock markets have started the year well, with most gaining during the first two weeks. The FTSE 100 broke through the 10,000 level last Friday for the first time in its history. Encouragingly, small and mid-cap stocks have led the rally,...

We have crossed from the old to the new year with a bit of cheer. While US equity markets have marked time, Europe’s broad market has hit a new high, and the FTSE 100 traded above 10,000 this morning. China traded the...

This has been the last week of liquid trading for 2025. The return of US economic data has sharpened the view that the US and other regions have had a soft patch.  Interestingly, that clarity has helped rather than hurt markets. Investors...

We are into the last active investment days of a truly remarkable year. After a short note on this week’s events, we offer some thoughts about 2025 and an outlook for 2026. Most equity markets have been solid this week but this...

Capital markets felt a little better this week, but with emphasis on “a little”. Global stocks gained incrementally through the week, putting most of the November market downdraft behind them. Underlying these moves is a genuine improvement in the economic outlook for...

Capital markets had a good week. Stocks and bonds gained virtually everywhere – particularly small and mid-cap companies. The most obvious rationale for this rally is a growing expectation of interest rate cuts, but we suspect this is just part of investors’...

Another topsy-turvy week ends with more volatility and lower markets. Stocks were boosted midweek, after investor darling Nvidia reported even better than optimistically expected corporate earnings growth for the previous and current quarters – a rejoinder to the crescendo of ‘AI bubble’...

Stock markets rallied in the early part of this week, but sold off on Thursday and into Friday. At the time of writing, we are at or even below last Friday’s levels in most major markets. The lacklustre performance might seem a...

After a pleasingly strong October, it was a tough first week of November in capital markets. Stocks sold off 2-3% virtually everywhere, and the biggest tech stocks were particularly vulnerable. Media commentary put this down to valuation vertigo – investors doubting whether...

Note: Readers last week might have been confused by the ‘AI generated content might be incorrect’ sentence instead of, or after, the chart. This was an error and was, ironically, inserted by embedded AI in our email software. We are sorry for...

Capital markets started the week calmer than they have been, and are ending with yet more all-time-highs. However, investors remain uneasily positive. The mid-week saw more wobbles, and this patch of increased volatility could continue – thanks to tariffs, credit troubles and...

Global risk assets sagged this week. Initially, stocks bounced a little from last Friday’s US sell-off, after Trump appeared to do a customary TACO turn on Sunday. But, investment portfolios are now closer to where we started October than where there got...

Stock markets keep pushing at all-time highs earlier this week, but with less enthusiasm than a few weeks ago. Then, late on Friday, a renewed Trump tariff threat against China’s rare earth export restrictions was enough to immediately send markets down 2%....

Global stocks bumped up this week, recovering all of last week’s losses and then some. That is despite a US government shutdown that shows no sign of being quickly resolved. Previous funding gaps have hurt the world’s largest economy, but markets are...

Global stock prices have dropped this week, with most regional markets ending down. Some of this is end-of-quarter rebalancing of institutional portfolios. Institutional investors typically adjust their portfolios back to the original risk weights, a process which is equivalent to taking profits...

Rate cuts and record highs for markets this week. As wholly expected, the US Federal Reserve voted to decrease interest rates by 0.25 percentage points to 4% (the effective rate is about 4.1%), and signalled further cuts before the year end. The...

It has been another slightly confusing week for some investors. Markets mulled over last Friday’s weaker than expected US jobs report, but stocks kept climbing higher virtually everywhere. There were two big market action stories: a sizable fall in long-term government bond...

The ‘Back to School’ week often gets a lot of attention. Traders return from their holidays and reassess their market outlooks. So, after the summer’s strong equity rally, it is no surprise that investors are doing a bit of soul searching. There...

Markets have had another relatively quiet week. The news, on the other hand, was full of debt panic and more Trump destabilisation. As noted in the past few weeks, investors seem to have become desensitised to these events. The things traders typically...