As usual, markets are now largely flat going into year end and the investor time horizon is starting to stretch out a little as we consider the prospects for 2021.

While many investors and company analysts may think themselves puzzled by the current behaviour of politicians, they really shouldn’t be, for in many senses it is exactly the same behavior regularly demonstrated by the senior management in large corporations.

In the long run markets are a weighting machine but in the short run they are a voting machine*

The narrative over the last six months was seemingly almost entirely around the twin themes of Covid and the US Election and it looks like November will come in as a really strong month in Global Equities, principally because the risk premium around both of those has fallen.

The latest set of regulations from the UK bring to mind the line from CS Lewis about Narnia, where it was “Always Winter but never Christmas”. C.S. Lewis was writing in a time of growing authoritarianism and at some point we are going to have to recognise that this is no longer about public health, but about a reluctance to relinquish power, once seized.