Notes on a crash: the short, medium and long term Last week will remain in the memories of the investment community for a very long time. Because of the extremely rapid fall from the all-time high that global markets had reached on 19 February, this stock market crash...

Forced sellers and other distractions Disorderly divestments create confusing market dynamics Last week could be characterised as an "orderly" repricing of equity markets to the consequences of COVID-19 disruptions. This week has seen second-order market dynamics,...

Market update – Oil + COVID-19 Oil price plunge adds to stock markets pressures from Coronavirus While most people spent the weekend dealing with the prospect of the COVID-19 epidemic taking hold of UK life, the financial community woke up this morning to another,...

Coronavirus market update – ramping up countermeasures can be scary Since our last update a week ago, market dynamics have developed very much along the lines we outlined as our expectation. The US Federal Reserve has taken the lead and lowered US interest rates by...

Coronavirus - hitting too close to home World-wide infections may be reducing, but with new cases appearing close by stock markets are now shock markets - 'keep calm and carry on' is once again the best motto for prudent investors.   Brexit may be 'Harder' than...

COVID-19 and the reaction of markets to pandemic fears Global equity markets have taken a significant hit this week, as investors started to take news of COVID19 spreading beyond China to the rest of the world more seriously. We thought it would be a good time to...

Bubble trouble Compared to last week, there have been few changes to the big picture narrative: Thanks to the virus containment efforts enacted by its government, China’s labour force is only now slowly returning to work following an unusually extended Lunar New Year...

V-shaped recovery focus for Valentine While investors enjoyed another upbeat week, the world’s medical profession (and the wider public at large) remained in a more troubled state, with concerns increasing after the World Health Organisation officially renamed this...

Virus week – not in stock markets January is behind us and what a year it’s already been. Investors have been bounced around from WWIII fears between the US and Iran, the formal Impeachment of the US president and the prospect of a global virus pandemic. Against this...

Headwinds and tailwinds The events of the past few weeks have left some investors wondering whether we are witnessing a rapid deterioration of the erstwhile ‘fair to potentially better than expected’ 2020 outlook. In light of the Chinese Corona virus threat to all...

Consolidation ahead? The quiet period of Christmas and New Year has definitely ended. Davos World Economic Forum, Chinese Coronavirus, Q4 earnings season, central bank deliberations, first batch of 2020 business sentiment figures and – you guessed it – the next steps...

All central bank liquidity or improved outlook too? Following the brief wobble after the escalation in tensions between the US and Iran, the risk appetite that drove the substantial stock market rally towards the end of last year has returned. With yet another good...

So far so good Compared to last week’s ‘brink-of-war’ geopolitical shock start to the year over the US-Iran tensions, this week has brought relatively positive economic news, with not much to upset global markets, even if the general news flow was tragic from a...

Goodbye 2019 - welcome 2020 and a new decade! 2020 will be interesting As not only the year, but also the decade comes to a close, 2019's last Cambridge Weekly edition has us reflecting on the larger shifts we are witnessing 2010/2020 - one decade back, one forward -...

Markets are driving the markets – will the economy keep up? It has been another quiet week in capital markets, which may be a surprise given the political shouting about the General Election. As we have written before, the recent rally in risk assets is at odds with...

Markets pause for reality check Conventional market wisdom holds that the cold and damp of autumn usually heightens the probability of downside volatility in markets – particularly when the economic outlook is unclear. The last quarter of 2018 was a prime example of...