By Fran Radano, Senior Investment Manager, The North American Income Trust plc Steady global growth ahead if trade negotiations produce a positive settlement.Bank valuations remain too low following de-risking, low defaults and good quality loan…
Week in review: taxing times
It’s been another interesting week with Apple the latest multinational company to be accused of tax dodging. In market news, European inflation failed to accelerate in August, adding to concerns about the economic outlook ahead…
Dollar Strength to Come – Implications for Oil and Equities
This week’s commentary is more of an update on views previously expressed rather than anything earth shatteringly new. That said, we do think that there are important developments afoot in the FX markets that have…
Why gold can be the winner if US interest rates stay low
Policy makers in the US continue to look for an excuse to keep interest rates low, and that should send the gold price higher from here, according to Nitesh Shah, analyst at ETF Securities. US…
Data Dependent US Central Bank Just Found Life More Difficult
Two weeks ago in our note titled “Markets have to adjust as Fed alters course”, we said the following; “…The Fed is continuously worried about upsetting financial markets if they remove the punch bowl. They…
US rate rise? You can bet on it
There’s an old Wall Street saying, “Don’t bet against the Fed”. But in recent times, markets have been doing exactly that and winning. Only last December, the Federal Reserve set out a clear path for…
Financial Markets Need to Adjust as Fed Alters Course
The Fed’s normalisation process has been a tortuous on/off affair primarily because their focus has been almost entirely on not upsetting the financial markets rather than doing the right thing for the long term health…
The US Dollar Turns Higher in a Difficult Week for Markets
For no obvious reason, the US Dollar turned higher on Tuesday last week and barely looked back. As suspected, with a stronger Dollar came weaker equities along with commodities and high yield bonds. In short,…
Week in review: waving Tata to British steel
Prime Minister, David Cameron, held an emergency meeting this week to decide what the future holds for troubled steel operator, Tata Steel. Though there’s unlikely to be any major decisions made immediately, Cameron has all…
Corporate Earnings and Capital Flows are the Focus for the Weeks Ahead
Although markets seemed to really quieten down ahead of the long Easter weekend, there was still enough happening and enough on the near horizon to keep us on our toes. Rather than dive into a long essay…
Time to be Bearish Again as the Reflation Trade is Topping
The rally in risk assets has been fast and furious in the last five weeks. Back on 14th February, we said “we certainly see the potential for a bit of a bounce if the "animal spirits"…
Recession Risks are Rising and Equities are Vulnerable
Equity markets certainly decided to look at the negatives from the US employment report released at the end of last week. That does not happen in bull markets. On the surface, and ignoring a few…