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An eventful week that saw the continued spread of the Coronavirus in China, the opening arguments of Trump’s impeachment trial and the 51st World Economic Forum in Davos. The World Health Organisation have called for emergency action in China following 830 confirmed cases with 41 deaths reported so far. The Chinese city of Wuhan, home…

Although the year is still young, thus far into January markets have seen a broad continuation of the trends we observed in Q4 of 2019, and indeed for many of the last few years. US Equity outpaced other global markets by quite some margin, with the S&P 500 retuning +2.21% in Sterling terms; although this…

 Geopolitics continued to grab headlines last week. The US-Iran conflict is currently the biggest source of instability for investors, although tensions showed signs of abating as the week progressed, with both sides relaying that retaliation was over. Despite the White House making noises regarding further economic sanctions, we do not expect further escalation around this…

We welcome not only a new year, but also a new decade. At the start of last year, we stated that in our opinion, the main risks were Trade, Brexit and Central Banks.  Last year was arguably dominated by Central Banks, with a synchronised easing around the globe, most notably in the US, where Jerome…

Last week the sole focus for UK citizens and investors was the UK election. The Conservatives sealed a landslide victory, their largest in decades, which saw the Pound jump and the UK equity market rally; smaller and mid-sized companies were notable beneficiaries. In what has felt like an age of political stalemate, Boris will now…

The sustained rise in the value of Sterling vs other major global currencies was the main story of the last week from the perspective of a UK-based investor, much as it has been for the year to date. The US Dollar was down -1.3% vs Sterling last week (-2.8% for the year to date) while…

Politics, trade wars and mixed data took up headlines last week. Away from politics in the US and Europe, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy party won 85% of seats at the local elections, more than trebling the number of seats that they won in 2015. Turnout was also significantly higher at 71%, up from 47% in 2015….

Last week gave us nothing new to ruminate on; it was a week of recycling the same political stories of trade deals, impeachments and elections. The stock markets around the world reacted favourably to constructive discussions around the ‘phase one’ trade deal between the US and China.  We find It interesting to note how the…