The week was dominated by the mixed fortunes of two of the world’s largest companies, namely Meta, the holding company for Facebook, and Amazon. Facebook parent company Meta has produced less than stellar results, and – according to UBS – is the TikTok for “old people”. Its results led to a historic plunge in the…
The week kicked off with a manic Monday on Wall Street, followed by another selloff on Tuesday. The Nasdaq 100 now trades at 25 times forward earnings, down from 30 at the end of 2021. On balance, global markets have continued the week on this soft note, with the MSCI currently down 8.5% year-to-date. But…
Equity market corrections are certainly not unusual and are both more frequent and less severe than market crashes. The Nirvana, of course, is when markets move up steadily, such as the period between October 2016 and January 2018 when the S&P experienced positive returns for fifteen consecutive months, leading to a cumulative return of 36%…
Early last year, we published a news edition entitled “The year of the vaccine”. Our thesis was that the success (or not) of the vaccine rollouts would determine the timing and extent to which global economies would reopen and normalise. This would, in turn, have a profound impact on the sustainability of the equity market…
Last week’s introduction to our news flash concluded that “the Omicron variant does not warrant a change in our view that the global economy is on a road – albeit bumpy – to a full recovery”. As coronaviruses constantly mutate, they tend to lose their pathogenic intensity. Omicron seems to be following this path. Those…
Our header may appear presumptuous, but this week the Omicron fear factor that gripped financial markets last Thursday and Friday, appeared to have reversed as we initially witnessed rebounds in both equities and currencies, with subsequent market directionality driven primarily by a focus on the US Fed’s updated outlook. Last week’s global market declines, which…
Local investors can be forgiven for thinking the reason for accelerated rand weakness in November is primarily related to SA-specific factors. However, until yesterday, the major influencer driving even developed market currencies weaker was outright dollar strength. As of yesterday, the dollar had strengthened against the Euro by 3.52%, the British pound by 2.73%, and…
The S&P 500 Index continues to set records despite known risks, such as growth slowdowns, supply chain issues, geo-political tensions between the US and China, rate hike probabilities, and persistent inflation. This has led to the S&P 500 Index now appearing very expensive, even as measured on a forward PE metric. However, it is likely…
As the COP26 conference winds down, it has seen some interesting wins for countries in the developed markets, and saw the US and China put aside their differences long enough to agree on an accord that will help trim global pollution. The overarching goal of the conference is to put measures in place to limit…
