Building on their continued strong recovery in the first quarter of 2023, global equities maintained their momentum in the second quarter. The MSCI World Index climbed 7%, the S&P 500 was up 8.74% and the Nasdaq 100 rose 15.16% for the quarter – bringing total gains for first half of 2023 to 15.43% for the…
With higher interest rates and tighter monetary policy dampening confidence throughout 2022, major indices ended a turbulent year in negative territory, despite the fact that markets bounced back strongly in the fourth quarter. That recovery has continued into the first quarter of 2023 with a 7.5% increase in the S&P 500, a 16.8% surge in…
At the onset of 2022, our first Weekly News Flash was entitled “The year of the Fed”. Even though we could not have anticipated events such as the war in Ukraine and prolonged Covid-19 lockdowns in China, it was indeed the case that spiralling inflation and interest rate hikes around the world were the key…
The quarter to end September has been a rollercoaster ride in a turbulent year. We saw markets ending at new lows for 2022, with the S&P 500 down 23.9% year-to-date, the MSCI World down 25.1% and the ALSI down 10.1% in rand terms and 21.6% in dollars. Let’s take a closer look at how the…
Markets have just recorded their worst quarter since the early days of the Covid-19 crisis in 2020, with the reality of persistently high inflation continuing to dictate direction. The MSCI World index dropped by 8.4% in June and 15.5% for the second quarter of 2022, while the S&P 500 fell by 8.3% in June and…
In one of our first communications in January, we indicated that inflation would be the big story of 2022. Even before war broke out in Ukraine, there were indications that the nature of inflation in the US and the rest of the world was shifting from transitory to persistent. And this, as we predicted, would…
As we enter a new year, it is an opportune time to reflect on the performance of the markets in 2021 and cast our eyes to the future. Looking back to the start of the previous year, we expected equity markets to deliver moderate returns; cautioned that many geopolitical risks were still in play; and…
Global markets were volatile for much of September – and the last week of the month in particular. The instability was enough to erase the strong gains made in the first two months of the quarter (Q3), leaving global equities flat to slightly down for the three-month period. It is important to place this disappointing…
Despite patches of volatility in the global markets, we have ended the second quarter on a high note for global equities. Yet there is a sense that we are reaching an important inflection point as the US economy continues to recover at a blistering pace, with a successful mass vaccination programme allowing for the rapid…
