making sense of the narrative
January 26, 2022
The first few weeks of January have been as ‘bad’ as December was ‘good’, but much of this is a confusion between the headline numbers dominated by the megacaps and the reality beneath the surface, which is one of considerable Read more…
January 13, 2022
Traditionally, Year Ahead pieces tend to take the form of a laundry list of predictions about ‘key market variables’, alongside some narrative to support why these might be slightly above, or slightly below, the consensus. Sometimes, the predictions are deliberately Read more…
October 7, 2021
Two sides to Every Story September turned out to be true to type, increased risk aversion in and around the triple witching mid month led to a spike in the price of put options (expressed as a higher VIX) and Read more…
September 6, 2021
The back-to-school-trade in markets is not to look at the short term forecasting uncertainties around the Delta Variant of Covid, but rather to consider the medium and longer term implications of the latest twists in the New Cold War and Read more…
August 9, 2021
The only thing normal about this summer seems to be the seasonality around markets as they increase risk aversion in the face of of light volumes and low liquidity. While we should ignore short-term traders as they try and make Read more…
July 8, 2021
The fundamentals remain intact; the Covid-Policy Induced Economic shutdown is clearly behind us, with Asia (ex Hong Kong) and the US leading the return to normality while Europe and the UK still lag. Temporary demand supply/imbalances are spiking commodity prices Read more…
June 10, 2021
While there was an initial attempt at Sell in May and Go Away, as far as equities were concerned the selling by leveraged retail traders was largely countered by buying on the dips for quality stocks from longer term investors. Read more…
May 3, 2021
A Pause that Refreshes… Market movements in April might best be described as an apparent ‘reversal of the reversal’ as many of the winners of the inflation/reflation trade that began in October appeared to sell off while the ‘losers’ rallied. Read more…
April 6, 2021
As March ended and closed out the first quarter, it also marked the anniversary of the equity and Credit market lows triggered by the Great Covid Panic of 2020. Intervention by the Fed to prevent market dislocation and an unprecedented Read more…