magazine archive
magazine archive
Aequitas
US stocks need to deliver strong second quarter earnings
Thursday 04 Jul 2019As America celebrates Independence Day, investors with exposure to US equities will be looking for fireworks of a different kind from the imminent second-quarter reporting season. The latest round of financial updates and – perhaps more importantly – outlook statements will begin in earnest on...
What rate cuts could mean for your portfolio
Thursday 27 Jun 2019With virtually every other central bank in the world taking a softer line in 2019 it is no great surprise to see our very own Bank of England doing the same. A 20 June Monetary Policy Committee vote of nine to zero to leave policy unchanged is perfectly in keeping with the concerns that the Bank of...
FTSE 100 needs more momentum to make further gains
Thursday 20 Jun 2019We are six months into the year and the FTSE 100 is up nearly 9%, with the prospect of a decent dividend on top. Given everything that is going on in the world right now, it seems fair to assume that many investors would have taken that return for 2019 as a whole, had they been offered it on 31...
What can we learn from different industry sector performance?
Thursday 13 Jun 2019This column has noted before (11 Apr 2019) the apparent disconnect between what bond markets and equity markets are saying. The renewed collapse in bond yields would appear to be presaging an economic slowdown or even a recession, yet equity markets seem buoyant as analysts continue to predict an...
Is Bitcoin really back?
Thursday 06 Jun 2019Well, here’s a funny thing. As global stock markets suffered their first down month of the year in May and bond markets rallied strongly, amid an apparent dash for safety in the face of continued uncertainty of global trade, Brexit and fresh unrest in the Middle East, one asset class gathered fresh...
Why profit means more to stocks than PM
Thursday 30 May 2019At the time of writing, the FTSE All-Share index is trading around the 4,000 mark. To accentuate the positives this is just 8% below its May 2018 all-time high and more than a fifth higher than its post-Brexit-vote lows of summer 2016. If you prefer a glass half-empty view, the benchmark is no...
Is it time to switch from growth to value strategies?
Thursday 23 May 2019Growth and momentum strategies have, by and large, been the only game in town for the last five years. Something evidenced by the meteoric rise of the NYSE Fang+ Index. Established in 2014, this benchmark contains 10 high-octane growth stocks – America’s Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet (...
The case for and against US stocks and shares
Thursday 16 May 2019After all of the hullaballoo surrounding their flotations, most investors will be aware Lyft is in need of a boost and Uber is stalling immediately after their respective initial public offerings (IPOs). Whether such huge deals ‘call the top’ or not remains to be seen, even if experienced investors...
Why Ankara and Buenos Aires remain important to global portfolios
Thursday 09 May 2019Last summer, many analysts were wondering whether Turkey was about to pull the rug from under global financial markets. Ankara’s currency, the lira, was in free fall as the economy over-heated and found itself over-reliant on foreign capital for funding, via a large current account deficit. A...
Do commodity prices suggest stock markets are right to be bullish?
Thursday 02 May 2019A surge in the oil price to six-month highs above $70 a barrel, using Brent crude as a benchmark, is grabbing a lot of headlines. Uncertainty over Libyan and Venezuelan output is contributing to crude’s gains but a greater near-term influence appears to be US president Donald Trump’s determination...