Chris Brown, CIO The old-fashioned mediaeval doctor would arrive at the hour of need, give his diagnosis and propose a cure (which, in the popular imagination at least, would always involve leaches). It is a well-known medical property that if a patient thinks he is getting cured this will often trigger a recovery even if […]
To repeat Warren Buffet’s famous phrase, it is only when the tide goes out you see who has been swimming naked. One of the more interesting developments of the last few months is that a couple of high-profile investors have been caught without trunks on, even in what has been a very benign, rising tide […]
Ros Price, Investment Committee Member. It is over a year since President Xi became President for life at the People’s Congress and at this spring’s meeting his power base was if anything consolidated even further. But there were some points of interest regarding the direction of the economy which are easy to have missed in […]
Q1 is an example of why investing can be hard. After the sharp sell-off in Q4, if you had told us that US and European data would continue to slow (with Germany looking recession-like), China only showing slim chances of a recovery and the Brexit deadlock remaining in place, we would have been pretty pessimistic […]
2018 was a tough year for markets. UK equities (measured by the FTSE All-Share index) fell by -9.5% (see Chart 1). However, this index is dominated by global multinational companies such as HSBC, Shell and GlaxoSmithKline. The more UK focussed FTSE 250 Index fell by -17.6%. Part of this is of course Brexit related (of which […]
Chris Brown, CIO Global equities are down around -8% for the quarter as we type on Friday 26th October. It is always tempting to theorise about why this should be and we have a couple of good hypotheses for the sell-off below. But it is also worth restating the basic maxim that you earn the […]
After a relatively quiet 2017, markets have once again become jumpier this year. Since the end of January, the US S&P 500 Index is +2.1% as we write. However, the UK FTSE 100 Index is -3.9% and the MSCI Emerging Market Index is down a whopping -21.5% (see Table 1). Is this an opportunity or […]
Ros Price, Investment Committee Member. Donald Trump was elected President of the US in part because of his powerful slogan that put ‘America first’ and his strong belief that the rest of the world has been treating the US badly and indeed, unfairly, in terms of trade. Some may find this assertion strange given the […]
Chris Brown, Chief Investment Officer With six months to go, we thought it would be a good time to take stock of where we are on Brexit and the implications the different possible outcomes would have on our portfolios and returns. From a market perspective, a fudgy, compromisey, typically European style deal which pleases no […]
2017 turned out to be an unusually quiet year for financial markets. Politics was as rumbustious and headline making as always but markets generally look through this unless someone somewhere is about to do something really stupid (like start a trade war, of which more below). Meanwhile, the news from the economy was of strong […]
