When will those dark clouds all disappear After a tumultuous year of geo-political, political and economic change global growth has slowed to its lowest annual rate since the financial crisis. Growth slowing to 3% and a benign inflationary environment provided… Read More…

Winner Takes It All In our last Economic Background of the decade global growth has weakened to 3%, its slowest pace since the global financial crisis and a material slowdown from 3.8% in 2017. Rising trade and geopolitical conflicts are… Read More…

The 2019 story so far has been one of political and geopolitical uncertainty leading to a dampening of investment, trade and confidence. Investor sentiment has oscillated between optimism and pessimism dependent upon the tweet, communiqué or vote in proceedings. Faced… Read More…

Ever Changing World As we head into the final quarter of the year we find the global economy slowing, inflation conspicuous by its absence and central banks delivering accommodative monetary policies. Increased volatility in markets reflects the ongoing trade tensions… Read More…

Most of our clients have exposure to UK and global equities as we believe that they are one of very few assets with the potential to provide capital growth and a rising income over time. This article is an update… Read More…

There may be trouble ahead Traditionally the summer months have little economic and political news flow, not so in 2019. As Hurricane Dorian heads towards mainland US, markets are increasingly becoming more volatile as economic data weakens, geopolitical risks intensify… Read More…

Hot in the City Reflecting the uncertainty in the global economy and markets, the UK’s weather provided great volatility this month, with Cambridge recording the highest ever temperature in the UK at 38.7C and Cheshire receiving more than twice the… Read More…

The increased expectation of a synchronised global loosening of monetary policy helped drive market sentiment in July. However slowing global growth, weakening trade and manufacturing data, benign inflation and protectionist government policies continue to overhang markets. After increasing the federal… Read More…

Starting All Over Again In Osaka, Japan the G20 (an international forum of government leaders, central banks and international organisations, accounting for at least 75% of world trade) met at the end of June to discuss amongst other things the… Read More…

June saw equity and bond markets rise. Markets continued to focus on global trade and tariffs in June and were buoyed by the accommodative language of the global Central Banks and by a resumption of talks between US and China.… Read More…

(Trade) War, what is it good for? After fearing a global recession in the final quarter of 2018, following a raft of weakening economic data, optimism returned to markets in the first 4 months of 2019, as Central Banks eased… Read More…

Trade fears and global tariffs were the focus of global markets attention in May with the realisation that a US-China trade resolution was not imminent and could escalate further. Accompanying global concern of trade, UK markets continue to contend with… Read More…

Slowdown, what slowdown? Global equity markets and other risk assets continued to rise during April as fears of slowing global trade, protectionist policies and lacklustre inflation have been brushed aside by relatively positive economic and corporate data. All major global… Read More…

Equity markets across the world have continued to provide investors with an excellent start to the year. The MSCI World returned 3.5% during the month resulting in a year-to-date return of 13.8%. It is a different story however for UK… Read More…

Global Central Banks – Goldilocks or a Grimm Tale The first quarter of 2019 has seen investment markets respond to the abrupt change in stance from the US Federal Reserve at the end of last year. In December the Federal… Read More…