18 May 2018 Despite frenetic diplomatic efforts, including the evident bonhomie between Presidents Macron and Trump, the United States has withdrawn from the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA). The world awaits details of America's new approach to confronting Iran's nuclear ambitions and its aggressive regional political behaviour. The Trump Administration has announced already its intention to [...]
13 February 2018 In my 2018 Investment Strategy blog entitled "Aging Rally or More to Play For?", I indicated that while the US (and global) equity market rally was aging in calendar terms, the factors traditionally signalling the end of the cycle were not yet evident. Nevertheless, I suggested that the US market would experience [...]
2 December 2017 In a swanky Washington restaurant in 1974, economist Arthur Laffer presented Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (future VP and US Secretary of Defence) a doodle on the back of a napkin. What appeared was a diagram of the now infamous “Laffer Curve”. The graph depicts the relationship between tax rates and tax [...]
22 October 2017 Investors appear convinced that stimulative G-7 monetary policies lie behind the markets’ record-setting performance. To be sure, that was the case between 2009 and 2015. During the past three years, however, I believe the impact of monetary policy has been quite neutral, the key driver of markets more recently has shifted from [...]