🏦 Fed plays a blinder

Now let’s get on with it… The Fed nailed it. Markets had rediscovered the jitters into the FOMC meeting. No sweat, the Fed assuaged their concerns. Any inflationary burst will be short-lived and tolerated while a post-covid, stimulus-boosted US economy would be back at pre-pandemic levels sharpish. No rate increase until 2024. That’s suggesting that […]

🗞️ US Primed With Cheques & Vaccinations

Thank you, very much… The stimulus cheques are being disbursed. Some will simply will be banked, much will be spent on consumer goods/food, but a significant amount find their way on to the stock market and/or very likely into cryptocurrency. The next weeks should be positive ones for risk markets if only for those reasons. […]

🗞️ Rate Worries Dismissed

Markets less fearful of higher rates… We’re at the halfway point of the month and if performance is going to mean reverse as per the recent period, then markets are set for an extremely volatile week or so. We think that’s unlikely and, even if yields rise, we’re over them necessarily being a harbinger for […]

🗞️ Ship it in

Fickle, edgy, volatile… and risk on Stimulus passed, job done. Now a massive boost is coming that will turbocharge US growth this year. The inflation/higher market yields debate should be firmly on the table – suddenly, though, it isn’t. Helpfully, the latest tepid US inflation data suggest a level of containment in it for the […]

🗞️ Right back at ya

Reset, now off we go again… Rates might – or not, be oversold, but the rise in yields looks to be taking a pause. That has bought much relief to markets that had wobbled on fear of rising market yields. Asian borrowers for example, so dependent on dollar funding, will breathe a sigh of relief […]

🗞️ The market will figure it out

Good ol’ non-farms… Powell previously failed to offer a hint of anything and the markets threw their toys out of the pram in disappointment. But that strong February non-farm payrolls report (+379k versus +180k expected and double the January pace) set the cat amongst the pigeons. It left investors caught between a rock and a […]

🗞️ Markets fighting back

Eyes on the prize… The inflation worries-induced rates tantrum continues, but risk markets are into the early throes of the next leg higher, no doubt looking forward to the $1.9trn US stimulus boost. Though large, and some perhaps would declare it an extravagance, it’s become a necessary evil for the economy. The withdrawal symptoms are […]

🗞️ Respite – before the next leg higher

Finger in the air… When is it all going to end? Not yet. Few will pick the top, but that’s not hugely important. It’s more about limiting the downside. Unfortunately, exiting too early always leaves the temptation to add back if markets continue their rise. And now a Chinese banker has warned that (foreign!) markets […]

🗞️ Inflation concerns? Yeah, right

Markets melt up… We’re back – with a good risk market recovery. Even rate bears will soon be put back in their box. Oversold markets are bid-up and we think it will persist through March. None of that ‘Beware the Ides of March’ stuff. Investors will have licked their wounds, surveyed the landscape and we […]

🗞️ Hold your nerve

Fortune will favour the brave… It is of course an understatement to say that markets have had a chaotic end to February. Investors have taken a savaging in the final sessions of February, and it will make for some potentially delicate asset allocation adjustments as we head into March. Most markets’ correlations have broken down […]