making sense of the narrative
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…
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…
May 19, 2021
There is a meaningful risk emerging that the quiescence of the public so far in response to lockdown is going to erupt into civil unrest over the summer as the bread and circuses employed so far are no longer enough Read more…
March 19, 2021
Almost a year ago when we wrote Spring but not sprung we were worried that the government was too risk averse, but never thought we would still be in lockdown as a second spring arrives with most of the West Read more…
January 20, 2021
Is the Glass half empty or half full? It depends on whether you are pouring, or drinking. Bill Cosby The biggest uncertainty in markets remains Covid Policy (as opposed to the virus itself) since it defines the underlying economic situation. Read more…
January 6, 2021
One of the (few) advantages of getting older is the benefit of experience, if not always wisdom. As such we sometimes spot patterns that are not necessarily picked up by historical graphs or datasets, based on ‘lived experience’. Thus in Read more…
November 19, 2020
The US Media are struggling a bit with the significant reduction in Trump content in recent days. As noted back in 2016, his carefully curated character of “The Donald” would send, often outrageous, tweets at all hours of the day Read more…
October 26, 2020
Since the Global Financial Crisis, the west has slowly woken up to the fact that China does not intend to play entirely by their rules. It has adapted its centralised approach to allow for market prices to send signals about Read more…