…‘twere well it were done quickly It has been another reasonable week for risk assets, especially equities. At the time of writing, markets around the world are within a percentage point of last week’s highs. In the US, large cap stocks are floating just off the...

Positioning for a summer of wait and see Cambridge’s investment team held its in-depth investment committee meeting last week, where we reflect on how the economy and capital markets have developed relative to our expectations from previous meetings and what may have...

Liquidity drives stock markets to new highs – for how long? The highly anticipated meeting between US President Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Osaka came and went - with somewhat of a damp squib outcome compared to some...

The tortoise cracks the egg – what’s real diversification? ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ is a phrase we hear time and time again. Although useful in explaining the concept to clients, it’s not really helpful in explaining why we seek to diversify and how it...

Battle of the ‘doves’ There were relatively few economic data or corporate announcements this week. The US came within a hair’s breadth of clearly carrying out an act of war against Iran. And the global stocks rose 2.25% during this week, with the US S&P500 index...

Mixed messages After a good start, June has carried on in a positive way for investors. Over the past week stock markets consolidated their gains, while bond yields stopped falling. Following the rapid deterioration of US manufacturing data, a number of positive data...

The return of the central bank put? Stock markets rallied on the hope that central banks' reassuring comments will lead to monetary stimulus once again Are Woodford's woes the death knell for active management? With deep knowledge of his investment approach we go...

Bond rally musings It all seemed to make a lot of sense to the media commentators this past week: government bonds rallied and equity markets fell because investors no longer expect a return of meaningful global economic growth during 2019, and in the UK the...

It is getting warmer Unfortunately this headline is not intended to suggest that things are getting better, but rather that Donald Trump’s trade war is heating up. In a way I feel reminded of the Cold War between the US and the USSR in my youth, when the odd skirmish...

Market support for Trump or unwarranted equanimity? A little over one week into the escalation of the US-China trade wars, stock markets have calmed and even made a partial recovery from last week’s sell-off. Globally, stock markets are now trading around 3.5% below...

Geopolitics re-enter market stage Just as markets were trying to prove that they have regained some rational balance when they shrugged off central banks’ rejection of further monetary support, geopolitical tensions returned with vengeance. Perhaps it was naïve of the...

Central banks disappoint expectations Last week we wrote that stock markets faced being challenged by the decline of a number of stimulating aspects that had been regularly named as the drivers of the 2019 recovery. The most crucial one being central banks’ assurances...

Waning market stimuli put stock markets on notice A pleasant Easter break has been followed by new highs for US equity indices. And yet, it has been a less comfortable week for professional investors. The tailwinds blowing the 2019 stock market bounce-back are waning....

Spring time from here? It is quite incredible how much investor sentiment has changed over the past 4 months. At Christmas, equity markets had suffered a decline from their September highs, which had many market commentators suggesting that the end of this prolonged...

Brexit in-limbo aside sentiment is improving Even though our prediction that Brexit would neither happen on 29 March nor 12 April has turned into reality, there seems little point in celebrating. Yes, the immediate threat of a cycle-ending shock event to the...

Happy 10th birthday, choppy bull market  Frustrating political divisions have drowned out the 10th anniversary of what many have called the most unloved equity bull market in history. Broad based equity market investors (those who held their nerve) have enjoyed...

29 March 2019 – quarter end The vexed date has come and gone, as we had suggested, but not quite in the manner we had expected. While the population widely blames Parliament and the political class in general for the Brexit execution debacle, MPs are just as divided...

Brinkmanship and extensions Every few months, I spend a few days of the week travelling across the UK with Cambridge’s relationship management team updating regional gatherings of financial advisers. This time around, it was not surprising to find most of the...

Bits & pieces The febrile state of UK politics and its journalists might get you thinking that the UK markets were expiring as fast as the Brexit deadline. Certainly, there’s been a bit of to-ing and fro-ing in the currency market although the moves were miniscule...

ECB stimulus U-turn leaves markets unimpressed Last week, we wrote about the impressive 25% market recovery the Chinese stock market had witnessed since the beginning of the year. This week, the Chinese leadership demonstrated that it dislikes stock market exuberance...