24 February 2023 The end of China's lockdown, signs global inflation is peaking, and the slower pace of US interest rate hikes have led investors to embrace the prospect of an economic "soft landing". Financial market optimism has been particularly evident in Europe. Indeed, collapsing natural gas prices have led to a 10% rally in … Continue reading Europe: Ukraine Invasion — A Year On
5 February 2023 After a bruising 2022, global financial markets now have fully embraced the propect of a "soft landing" for the global economy. Even the IMF has revised up its 2023 GDP growth forecast following China's post-Covid opening, declining European natural gas prices, and signs that world-wide inflation may have peaked. In the United … Continue reading Soft Landing: What Could Go Wrong?
12 May 2022 In my 2022 Strategy blog entitled "Avoiding Stagflation?" (published 1 December 2021), I suggested global financial market volatility was poised to rise, and equity and bond returns would be negative. On a relative basis, however, I made the case for an outperformance of European markets. Much has happened during the past six … Continue reading European Markets: Intact or In Tatters?
18 January 2022 In December, the US Federal Reserve abandoned its belief that rising inflation was "transitory", and signaled that monetary tightening may commence earlier that expected. In their defense, the extreme imbalances in aggregate supply and demand in both labour and goods markets (e.g. supply chain disruptions) during the 2020/21 economic recovery have complicated … Continue reading Fed to Tighten Till Markets Pushback