Editorials Library

Is the Fed engineering a recession? The US Federal Reserve made a bold statement in June by hiking rates by 0.75%, the biggest rise in almost 30 years.  It is widely expected that July’s rate hike will also be for 0.75%, showing just how committed the Fed is to get...

NO RECESSION FOR NOW It’s looking increasingly likely that a recession will be avoided in 2022, despite evidence that growth prospects are weakening.  The jobs report for May showed that hiring is still expanding at a healthy rate. Manufacturing and services sectors...

The Fed conundrum Last week, US GDP fell at an annual rate of 1.4% which was worse than forecast. At the same time, the US just like the rest of the world is facing very high inflation and with no meaningful drop in sight, at least in the short term.  As a result, the...

Recession looming? You may have heard lately that the two and ten-year yield curves have inverted and that it’s an indication a recession is coming. What it means in short is that the bond market isn’t buying the idea that the Fed is going to be able to engineer a...

Quick take on the war in Ukraine: The economic sanctions inflicted on Russia have led to dramatic price increases in all commodities. Oil and natural gas have hit multi year highs while food staples such as wheat have smashed record highs.  This leaves the world with...

Making sense of the recent market downturn: US stock markets have had a tough month of January. In fact, the worst start to the year since the financial crisis.  The main drivers of this negative sentiment are rising inflation and the rising interest rate regime...

New spanner in the works: On Friday 26th of November as the first news of the Omicron strain emerged, US markets had their worst day in a year.  Furthermore, oil plunged 16% in only a few days, after several countries announced travel bans for South Africa where the...

Central bank shift? In a major shift following the pandemic and the unleashing of liquidity across the world, several central banks have signaled an end to quantitative easing and more importantly decided to raise interest rates.  Canada, Australia, the UK and several...

Inflation is rearing its ugly head again and is directly linked to important themes that impact markets and our every day lives.  In its last FOMC meeting the Fed dropped the term transitory it had been using all year to describe the inflationary pressures being felt...

Has gold lost its shine? Following last year’s Covid crash in financial markets gold was in the spotlight again after many years of sideways trading. It had a meteoric rise alongside equities and even hit a record $2k price before settling down again. Several analysts...

Regulation contagion? Chinese tech and tutoring companies have been hit hard over the past couple of weeks by regulators leading to the biggest shakeout in the last five years and forcing Chinese authorities to issue statements to calm market participants. Citing...

A new risk factor for markets: Equity markets have been hitting all time highs lately but the imminent debt ceiling is an event that could pose a threat to the market in the near term. U.S. stocks keep shaking off any potential bad news to keep driving higher on the...