Following the barnstorming performance of global equities markets in 2023, the bull run continued throughout the first quarter of this year. Investors have embraced global returns, with the S&P 500 ending Q1 2024 up 10.56%, and the MSCI World gaining just over 9%. Markets remained buoyant on expectations that a soft landing lay ahead for…
In our first newsletter of 2023, we set out our expectation for “markets to grind higher during 2023 and recover a meaningful portion of 2022’s losses”. This forecast turned out to be accurate, with equities rallying strongly in response to signs that global inflation had abated and that the interest rate tightening cycle had reached its…
After a positive first and second quarter which saw the S&P500 gain nearly 17%, the third quarter of 2023 reflects markets that are pricing in a different version of reality. The bullish sentiment of the first six months of the year faded in the wake of a sharply negative September, which followed a sell-off in early…
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…
