Transition uncertainties The great British summer may have struggled to materialise so far, but the end of the first half of the year always brings an element of sunny optimism. We will comment on market and investment returns in more detail next week, when the data...

Moderating expectations The seemingly never-ending pandemic-induced restrictions and uncertainty is making the forward planning of summer activities quite precarious and frustrating at times. That capital markets have recently borne fewer surprises than the planning...



Investors try to make sense of the Fed’s ‘dot-plot’ The biggest event of the week took place on Wednesday, as the US Federal Reserve (Fed) concluded its two-day Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) meeting, where it discussed economy policy and its latest projections...

Hazy as Carbis Bay The G7 meeting in St. Ives’ Carbis Bay was rightly the centre of attention in the UK last week and looked to centre on Europe’s leaders cosying up to a much more loveable US administration, at the same time as trying not to mention Brexit too much....

Going up sideways May’s returns numbers are in, and the headlines are as follows: a rotation from tech to financials – and from value to growth – as well as a bit more downward pressure on bonds. We have included our usual ‘in review’ table and monthly comments below....

Touch of Goldilocks at the end of May After a strong April, May felt somewhat of a mixed bag for investors, particularly when stock markets suffered a correction in the middle of the month. However, as the month drew to a close, it was mostly only cryptocurrency...

Market resilience in face of Bitcoin crash Beyond the directly virus-related stories, last week’s news was dominated by cryptocurrency shenanigans and the return of outright war in the Middle East. Cryptos are the “Reality TV” version of markets – hugely fascinating,...

Market vertigo galore Last week we wrote how the ‘sell in May and go away’ maxim has historically not shown much merit for investors. At the end of last week, some of our readers may have looked back at those sentences ruefully. Markets have certainly lost a bit of...

Sell in May and go away? The traditional stock market adage of ‘sell in May and go away’ is back in vogue again this year, after the first four months of 2021 brought healthy returns to investors with equity exposure. Of course, historic return observations have...

Doubling of earnings leaves markets cold After the previous week’s lull in global equity markets, most regions recovered their previous highs last week, albeit in somewhat lacklustre trading patterns. Just as there were several reasons why markets were in a bad mood...

‘Risk on’ pauses while the real world keeps accelerating Equity markets finally paused in their upward trend last week, with the most speculative assets like Bitcoin experiencing their first serious setback since February. It was hard to pin the cause on any one...

New bond news gives green light for equity investors We usually start by summarising equity market action over the course of the past week. Last week, it was developments in the bond markets that may be of more significance for investors, over the fact that equities...

Bond markets signal economic optimism Following a strong first quarter for equity investors worldwide, the second quarter is off to a good start as well, with most global stock markets already up by a few percentage points. While the sense that stock markets are...

In this market update, Lothar Mentel – lead investment adviser to Cambridge - discusses the potential market risk of the recent losses of Greensill, Archegos and Credit Suisse, residual market fear of bond yields, and the use of Bitcoin as an asset by fund managers....

The first quarter of 2021 was no April fool The fact is that the first quarter of 2021 has brought genuine good news for UK-based investors with exposure to global stock markets. Equity markets have generally resumed an upward trajectory, while low risk assets,...

Moving on – towards a post pandemic world It has been another week of markets feeling on edge, without going anywhere. Markets seem to have caught a bit of worry about the passage of growth, oddly just as the wider populace gets more confident and the recent headwind...