The beginning of November saw the World Trade Organisation authorise China to put $3.6bn (£2.8bn) of tariffs on US goods. The following week it was reported that a potential trade deal between the two countries could see tariffs ‘rolled back’. However by the middle of November Donald Trump was threatening to increase tariffs further still …
The beginning of October brought us the Conservative Party conference and a plethora of promises and fiery speeches. Meanwhile world stock markets were tumbling on fears of a global sell-off and the US/Europe tariff war joining the US/China dispute. By the middle of the month President Trump declared himself ‘optimistic’ about trade talks with China. …
Introduction August is traditionally known as the ‘silly season’. The great and the good are on holiday. Nothing is happening: there are no world events. So the newspapers have to resort to any number of peripheral and not-at-all-serious subjects to fill their columns. Not this year. Most of the headlines in the UK concerned Brexit. …
Gold hit a six-year high as nervous investors looked for alternatives to stock markets. The IMF cut global growth forecasts amid continuing trade tensions. In any normal month these would have been perfectly normal introduction, but July was not a normal month. With Boris Johnson becoming UK Prime Minister and sweeping into 10 Downing Street …
Introduction Many of you will know the old stock market adage: ‘Sell in May and go away, and come on back on St. Leger’s Day.’ The theory was that with everyone out of London for the summer season there was little business to be done and the stock market drifted lower. These days, of course, …
Introduction May was a relatively quiet month, virtually nothing of any importance happened at all. Well, apart from the European elections, Theresa May’s decision to stand down and the re-escalation of the US/China trade war. Not content with that, Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Mexico and Angela Merkel decided that her potential successor wasn’t up …
Introduction First the good news. None of the leading world stock markets on which we report in this Bulletin fell in April. With just one exception – China – all the markets made gains, with the German DAX index leading the way. Generally the world breathed a sigh of relief as relations between the US …
Introduction We have commented before on the difficulty of ‘hitting a moving target.’ Sometimes in writing this commentary you run the risk of what you write being overtaken by events, and that has never been truer than this month. In the short time between us publishing notes and you reading them it is possible that …
Introduction February was another month when all the important news seems to happen in the last week of the month. President Trump delivered the annual State of the Union address on February 6th and announced a second meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The two duly met up in North Korea three weeks later, only …
Introduction October was, to put it mildly, an eventful month. It was a month which saw the majority of markets on which we report down steeply, as fears of higher interest rates in the US combined with worries about the US/China trade war. There was, however, one market that went up sharply: Brazil elected a …
