History abounds with kingmakers – figures who didn’t have the outright power to take the crown for themselves – yet had the clout to determine who would wear it next. With the ANC’s hegemony slipping away, South African politics is likely to create new openings for smaller political parties to pull the strings after the…
Last year, a supergroup called The Magnificent Seven stormed the stock market and accounted for an outsized portion of returns. This year, the band of seven Big Tech stocks— Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla — has broken up. Alphabet, Apple, and Tesla are no longer top of the pops. In fact, Telsa…
Events in Asian currency markets this week illustrate why, in our view, the US dollar remains king of currencies, even with forecasts for the Fed to start cutting interest rates later this year. The Japanese yen slid to a 34-year low at near 152 per dollar, triggering an emergency meeting of Japan’s monetary authorities. Government,…
In recent months, we have spoken about the concentration risks associated with the disproportionate weighting of the Magnificent Seven Big Tech stocks in the S&P 500 index. This week, a mailer from Coronation to its clients highlights how the outperformance of the Magnificent Seven since 2023 has resulted in a “bifurcation” of global equities markets.…
Throughout 2023, it was the momentum of the Magnificent 7 that drove US equity market returns, with an equal dollar-weighted return of 107%. The seven Big Tech companies – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla – powered ahead to account for 28% of the S&P 500 index by the end of the year.…
The world we live in would be markedly different without life sciences inventions and discoveries such as vaccines, antibiotics, and the contraceptive pill, to name just a few. The latest addition to the list is a category of drugs called GLP-1 agonists, which were initially developed as a treatment for diabetes. In addition to helping…
Ever since passive investing vehicles started to gain traction with their share of the US domestic equity fund market overtaking active funds in or around August 2018 – some fund managers and analysts have suggested that active funds are about to come into their own again. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, just this week…
South Africa’s Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana this week presented a Budget that was uninspiring and unremarkable, apart from the announcement of government’s decision to tap into the Gold and Foreign Exchange Contingency Reserve Account (GFECRA). The GFECRA reflects movements in the value of the Reserve Bank’s stock of gold, foreign exchange, and forwards or swaps…
Markets briefly fell on Tuesday with the news that consumer prices in the US rose by a higher-than-hoped-for 3.1% for the twelve months to the end of January. But, by the end of the week, the S&P 500 had powered back to record highs. The rapid retracing of the value equities had lost earlier this…
