The presidential election in Argentina and the general election in the Netherlands this week both delivered unexpected results that caution investors to expect a volatile ride next year. In Argentina, libertarian candidate, Javier Milei, caused a major upset by securing 56% of the vote to win his country’s presidency. He rode into power on a…
Howard Marks, the legendary investor, wrote that investment markets swing between euphoria and depression and between celebrating positive developments and obsessing over negatives. We’ve experienced both sides of the pendulum this year, most recently with a strong month-to-date rally that has erased the losses of a dismal September and October for equities. At the time…
The Monkey’s Paw, an early 20th century short story by WW Jacobs about a cursed artefact that grants wishes, warns that getting what you want often comes with a price. Investors anticipating not only the end of interest rate hikes but looking ahead to central banks lowering lending rates should perhaps heed the moral of…
On the face of it, equity markets have many reasons to celebrate. More than three quarters of Fortune 500 companies that have reported earnings for the September quarter have beaten expectations, the US has delivered impressive GDP growth and inflation seems finally to be coming under control. Why, then, did the S&P 500 fall another…
The Big Five in African game animals has remained unchanged since the term was first coined—lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and African buffalo. By contrast, the big five stocks on the S&P 500 have changed dramatically over the past 20 years as the exponential growth of the technology industry has eclipsed capital-intensive industries such as oil…
With war raging in the Ukraine and conflict in Israel, we appear to be in the midst of a period of elevated geopolitical risk. As the FT points out, the World Uncertainty Index, which measures the prevalence of the word “uncertain” in analysts’ reports, has jumped significantly since 2021. The Vix index – which measures…
The Hamas incursion into Israel last weekend is by far this week’s biggest story in geopolitics, but the event has left markets outside of the Middle East largely unmoved. The Tel Aviv stock exchange index (TA-125) fell by almost 7% last Sunday following the attacks on Saturday, with the Israeli central bank resorting to unprecedented…
Governments around the world racked up a record $92 trillion in public debt by the end of 2022, with 3.3 billion people living in countries where interest payments are greater than their expenditure on health or education. To put it simply, many governments around the world would be declared insolvent if they were publicly traded…
Forecasts that economists, equities analysts, central banks, multilateral institutions, and diviners make about markets and economies have a tendency to cloud over in retrospect. Looking back at the predictions of some major organisations and publications made at the onset of 2023 compared to the actual outcomes year to date, confirms these outlooks are as unreliable…
