My parents want to sell their house. They live in the country and, as they get older, want something that is more walkable to the shops and less maintenance. They have in mind the price they want but they aren’t in a hurry to sell and don’t have a mortgage or need one for the
Japanese equities are up 25% so far this year. This makes them the second-best market we track (coming after the US Nasdaq market which had a horrible 2022). A client has asked whether we think they look like an opportunity for the next 12 months. The argument usually put forward by Japan bulls would be
My daughter is still (just) young enough to be half dreading, half looking forward to going back to school. My gut feel is these coming weeks (at least after the US Labour Day holiday) will also feel very back to school for markets. There has been a tension all year between the pressure that
This is my last weekly note before my summer break. I therefore thought I’d look back on the year we have had so far. I often use the chart below as a basic (top down) framework for clients. We think we have three basic scenarios to worry about today. Inflation, which has been rare for
This week, a glance into what it is like to be very rich. One of the themes of the last decade has been the resilience of the very well off to the ups and downs of the global economy and markets. My three things this week are some evidence that this trend is still very
Finally, some good inflation news out of the UK this week. We saw a relief rally in UK government bonds (up 1.6% so far this week) and UK mid-cap equities (the FTSE 250 Index is +3.8%). Frankly, we were expecting this to happen earlier in the year, but it was good to finally see some
I wrote our quarterly investment review last week. This is our more detailed review of the first half of the year and our outlook for the rest of it. The link is here for those that want a deeper dive into our positioning and where we think we are in the cycle. I was therefore
The untimely rise of anti-ESG sentiment Our clients will already know that over the past decade we have seen accelerating momentum around ESG disclosure and commitments. As more funds flew into sustainable investments, it only made sense for regulators to advocate for comprehensive and comparable information around ESG and corporate responsibility. This trend, despite being
Summary 2023 has continued to surprise forecasters. Equities rose inQ2 as the much-anticipated slowdown has yet to materialise. The global economy has been remarkably resilient (so far)to rising interest rates. That said, equity gains were concentrated in a very narrow list of familiar US technology giants including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Nvidia. Outside of
I wrote last week about how we weren’t – even with rates at 5% or more – putting much cash on deposit for clients. For those that missed it, our logic is that if it is yield you are after, you can get more on short-dated high-quality credit (7% or so today) without taking on