The Cambridge Weekly –8th January 2024

After the party, the hangover The first week of January feeling was eerily reminiscent of one year ago: strikes, endless rain and then everything else that causes the usual January blues. Yet investors in diversified global investment portfolios will get a positive...

The Cambridge Weekly – 18th December 2023

Central bank elves boost 2023 Santa rally This edition of the Cambridge Weekly presents our outlook for 2024, which we compiled over the past two weeks. Inevitably, much of what we write depends on the starting point and this past week has moved that starting point...

The Cambridge Weekly – 1th December 2023

A bit of a downer We review November’s cheery asset performance below. Early December is also currently on a positive track and trading volumes have been higher than November’s averages generally, suggesting quite a bit of capital is being put to work by investors....

The Cambridge Weekly – 4th December 2023

Price shock reversal November brought investors the opposite of October and turned most portfolio returns into positive mid single-digit numbers for the year. As we have written here over the past weeks, the distinct turn in sentiment that drove markets in November...

The Cambridge Weekly –27th November 2023

US economy slows to our pace November remains a positive month in capital markets, although equities had a neutral week and longer bond prices have fallen back. UK government bonds (Gilts) have been the best performing bond market in the past few weeks, but the tax...

The Cambridge Weekly –20th November 2023

Inflation genie back in the bottle? Last week was another good one for most investors. In sterling terms, the strongest equity markets were in Europe with the DAX up 4.5% since last Friday afternoon. The biggest winners have been small and mid-sized firms; the UK...

The Cambridge Weekly –13th November 2023

Back pedalling central bankers The turnaround rally in stock and bond markets – started by the previous week’s dovish central bank comments – petered out towards the end of last week, with central bankers seemingly at pains to reverse their messaging, or at least...

The Cambridge Weekly –6th November 2023

The Cambridge Weekly –6th November 2023 Dovishness proves contagious Just how much change a week can bring to markets was amply visible during the last seven days. Last week we wrote about how negative sentiment in stock markets can turn into a self-perpetuating...

The Cambridge Weekly – 30th October 2023

The resilience narrative comes under pressure A potentially meaningful change in correlations happened last week. In recent times, a fall in yields (and therefore a rise in bond prices) would go alongside rises in equity prices, particularly the mega-cap growth...

The Cambridge Weekly – 23rd October 2023

Bonds yield volatility has markets guessing While the human suffering in the Middle East conflict worsened as expected last week, it has not yet spread further across the region. Therefore, and as we wrote last week, markets have not particularly acknowledged the rise...

The Cambridge Weekly – 16th October 2023

Capital markets and war Last week saw the world most certainly taken a turn for the worse from a humanitarian point of view. Pictures of the atrocities committed in the Middle East, and indeed the timing, drew immediate parallels with the Yom Kippur War of October...

The Cambridge Weekly – 9th October 2023

Recession fears creeping back Financial markets are in one of those occasional periods where the world’s economic realities do not quite seem to match what some asset price moves seem to want to tell us. Last week and continuing the trend from the previous week, we...