News

Market Update 28th February

News: 28 February 2022

Today is one of those few occasions when reporting on financial markets takes a degree of gravitas beyond the usual daily wheeler-dealering of the trading floors. It is also a reminder that extreme events can and do happen. Of all the possible scenarios that have been building over the early weeks of 2022, a full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine was the least likely. But the Devon Loch of European politics has unfolded in front of our eyes.

Market Update 21st February

News: 21 February 2022

Power, as we have argued before, is the great fragility of the modern world. Having possibly thought that storms and power cuts were things that happened only in the North and Scotland, Eunice’s damage to the Cornish grid was a nasty surprise.

Market Update 14th February

News: 14 February 2022

Given our knowledge of the world’s half-hearted crawl towards carbon net zero, this makes Russia exceedingly important. It becomes doubly exceedingly important when the West is staring at both barrels of generationally high inflation and rising interest rates.

Market Update 7th February

News: 07 February 2022

That was then. The ‘now’ is something altogether different. The great worry of the Banks is that inflation expectations have weighed anchor. Inflation is over 5% both here in the UK and in Europe. In the United States it is over 7% and likely to rise even more.

Market Update - 25th January

News: 25 January 2022

The greatest falls in share prices have been seen in the most speculative and loss-making stocks. These have become contagious and are dragging down, without any clear logic, the stock prices of even the most reliable, profitable and recession-resistant businesses.

Market Update - 17th January

News: 17 January 2022

2022 has started not so much with noise, but with a screeching cacophony. Our intention this week is to attempt to make some sense out of what is, yet again, a sensation of information overload.

Market Update - 12th January

News: 12 January 2022

The problem is that history is not a great guide to 2022, where the amount of debt turns even the smallest rise in its cost into a significant change.

Leadership, perseverance and diversity in financial services

News: 09 December 2021

Market Update - 6th December

News: 06 December 2021

Anyone hoping that we may get a breather in December is going to be terribly disappointed. If anything, the roar of the daily market noise is becoming louder. Little of it makes sense, but that is always how it is when the noise is as loud as this.

Market Update - 29th November

News: 29 November 2021

Rapidly rising share prices are the greatest disguise that risk can ever take. The seduction of short-term paper profits can readily distract one’s focus from the virtues of long-proven quality; we hope that our heads are not so easily turned.