🔛 Feels good.. it’s risk-on

No straight line, but up and away… The tea leaves are once again aligned – and the message is clear: risk prices are in the ascendancy. J&J’s one-shot vaccine is weeks away from emergency approval. The $1.9trn covid relief package has been approved by the US congress, and in its entirety after their Vice President’s […]

🗞️ Turbocharged markets

Fast forwarding after the blip… We questioned whether Main Street was about to unleash some kind of Big Bang II on the financial markets amid some significant falls in equities and weakness across the risk asset markets. It might still, but fast forward a few days and we’re just about back at the heady levels […]

📈 Back to record-breaking territory

2021 starts again… It’s almost as if the second half of January was a necessary aberration, if only to check the breakneck speed with which markets were rallying. That opening rally was courtesy of new year exuberance on the back of the Biden inauguration-cum-fiscal stimulus anticipation, as well as the hope that the vaccine roll-out […]

☕ Storm in a tea cup

Wobble over, big finance back in the game… It took a blow, but the establishment is fighting back. Well, not quite, but calm has transcended the markets and the hitherto great arbiter of efficient capital allocation is back in the game. So, after reeling for much of the final week of January and unfortunately denting […]

💥 Financial markets’ Big Bang II

Established order rattled by the little guy… The emerging retail-led investing phenomenon, buying (at the moment) in heavily shorted equities, has stirred markets and risks  – becoming a real poke in the eye for the established order. It should throw up many concerns for traditional markets and the accepted behaviour of institutional investors (include hedge […]

🗞️ Vaccine sucker punch floors market

Vaccine squabbles sully the mood… The ‘Biden bounce’ might have turned into an almighty, vaccine-squabble-inspired sell-off. And the huge bullish tone early on may have flipped, leaving markets exhibiting a more nervous disposition. But they’ve bounced again, leaving investors chewing on whether they will hang on for a bit longer this time. After all, in […]

🗞️ Weighing up the risks

Front running policy… Talk of impending doom – market implosion and the like – is just that. Accommodative policy and too much liquidity sloshing around the financial system will keep risk propped up through 2021. Investors, however, have taken their stake in the market and are just front-running this particular dynamic. In equities, earnings are […]

🗞️ Vaccine angst riles market

Net, net we will muddle through… Asian markets (especially China) are firing ahead and the US equity markets are setting record highs at least once or twice a week. The former is the world’s manufacturing unit, the latter is being driven by expectations that a stimulus package will soon be agreed and propel activity Q2 […]

🗞️ Solid opening stanza

We’ll take that… The euphoria faded almost as quickly as it erupted although markets managed to hang on to enough of their gains, keeping them in the black for the week as well as for the opening period of 2021. The issues are unchanged. The pandemic represents the immediate angst, and the vaccine roll-out the […]

🎇 Biden bounce fizzles out

Great start, more please… It’s going to be strange, after four years of Trump, to return to normal. The establishment is back. As markets and investors adjust, the imponderables now don’t really take in domestic US political risk, or uncertainty. We know what coming in that sense. As politics become much more predictable, we can […]