Cambridge Weekly – 11 February 2019

Is 2019’s market recovery beginning to stutter? After one of the worst Decembers for global investors since the Great Depression, followed by the best January since 1987, February has started not too badly for investors. While up overall, the 7th week of the 2019...

Cambridge Weekly – 28 January 2019

Market absurdities The continued stock market recovery is not as absurd as it may appear in light of deteriorating economic news flow if the bulk of last year's sell-off was driven by overly tight global liquidity. Europe struggles to find its feet From fastest to...

The Cambridge Weekly – 21 January 2019

Markets looking ahead The New Year’s stock market recovery rally we wrote about last week has continued, to the surprise of many who are observing unprecedented political shambles on either side of the Atlantic. The UK appeared to be descending into political chaos,...

The Cambridge Weekly – 14 January 2019

Substantial but fragile New Year recovery While the UK public were stunned and distracted by the live constitutional drama between parliament and government over Brexit, equity markets continued their New Year’s recovery rally. Since the pre-Christmas lows, Global...

The Cambridge Weekly – 7 January 2019

Year-end turbulences heralding difficult 2019? Happy New Year from team Cambridge and here's to a more joyful 2019 for investors! As our 2018 table of asset class returns below shows, 2018 brought even less joy for investors worldwide than we had expected. The only...

The Cambridge Weekly – 24th December 2018

Fed tightens, market falls and economy keeps on going We wrote about our outlook for 2019 last week. After that slightly lengthy read, we thought a shorter note discussing what has caused market behaviour would be helpful. So, this week all eyes were on the US Federal...

The Cambridge Weekly – 17 December 2018

Cambridge’s 2019 Outlook Overview It’s fair to say that most investors and commentators are taking a fairly bleak view of 2019’s prospects. The rampant US growth engine that drove the global economy forward this year appears to have passed its peak and is likely to...

The Cambridge Weekly – 10 December 2018

Roller-coaster Advent The news of a 90-day trade truce between presidents Trump and Xi’s was widely welcomed this week. It was probably the most that could be expected of their much-anticipated dinner conversation at the fringes of the G20 summit last weekend in...

The Cambridge Weekly – 3 December 2018

Predicaments As November draws to a close, global stock markets have provided a positive last week to an otherwise bleak month for investors. And as it stands, it is not just October and November but the whole of 2018 that has turned into a disappointment for...

The Cambridge Weekly – 26 November

Muted replay of 2015 or end of cycle approaching 2019? It certainly helped nerves this week that the US was distracted by their Thanksgiving celebrations and politics in the UK calmed down, after the Eurosceptic Tory rebels’ spectacular failure to deliver on last...

The Cambridge Weekly – 19 November

Keep calm and carry on It has undeniably been the most unnerving week in UK politics since the week following the Brexit referendum, when the British electorate unexpectedly rejected the EU status quo. Representatives of both sides have finally agreed on a withdrawal...

The Cambridge Weekly – 5 November 2018

Good-bye cathartic October What a difference one month can make. At the end of September, one of the biggest conundrums of 2018 was the divergence of stock market returns between the US (strongly positive) and the rest of the world (flat). October’s stock market...

The Cambridge Weekly – 29 October 2018

Stock markets suffer liquidity squeeze During the recovery from February’s stock market correction, we wrote on these pages that the upsurge in equities – particularly in the US – felt a little uncomfortable. This was because the correction had not followed the usual...

Cambridge Weekly – 15 October 2018

Autopsy of a stock market sell-off Last week, we wondered why stock markets had not reacted more negatively to the latest upward wave of bond yields, when this had led to a formidable stock market correction back in February. As it turned out over the course of this...

Cambridge Weekly – 8 October 2018

Bond market sell-off surprise Having written only last week that Trump’s trade wars may prove a bizarrely supportive factor towards safely unwinding overvalued bond markets, I feel as if I provoked bond markets to prove me wrong. Amongst the other news stories, bond...

Cambridge Weekly – 1 October 2018

Poor politics containing bond market risks? As September and Q3/2018 drew to a close, investors enjoyed a second consecutive week of positive returns, ending the period not only with positive returns overall, but also in an uptrend. End of an era for the Fed The era...

Cambridge Weekly – 24 September 2018

Brexit clamour vs. real market news The UK’s establishment had pinned high hopes on a Brexit breakthrough at the EU’s Salzburg (non-Brexit specific) summit. But the rest of the EU had a different agenda, so disappointment was inevitable. Judging by the vastly...

Cambridge Weekly – 14th September 2018

Financial crisis – 10 years on It was 10 years ago this week that US investment bank Lehman Brothers was allowed to default. This event marked the beginning of the ultimate escalation from a severe credit crunch to a full blown global financial sector meltdown. The...