Helping you navigate the new normal
The blog’s 6-monthly review of global financial markets highlights some interesting developments. It began 4 years ago, and was followed by the co-ordinated G-20 stimulus programme in March 2009. This ran out of steam by April 2011, leading the blog …
The arrival of the internet should make it easier to source key data from around the world. But instead, it seems to encourage Twitter-like behaviour, where everyone simply repeats what has already been said.
How else to explain the almost universal …
Global bond investors have found a new worry. 10 year interest rates in Spain, the world’s 12th largest economy, have risen alarmingly in recent weeks. As the chart shows, they are now above 7% (blue column) compared to 4% when the blog first focused…
The blog’s Boom/Gloom Index (blue column) reaches its 3rd anniversary this month.
It was introduced to help monitor sentiment in financial markets, on the basis that “many markets are clearly being ruled by sentiment”. It has since done a good job in…
The blog’s series on the VUCA world today reaches C for Complexity.
Interest rates are key to company profitability. They determine rates of return for new investments, and their affordability. They also have a major influence on consumer spending p…
Some things are too ‘obvious’ for highly-paid professionals in the financial world to accept. If life was this simple, then clients might ask why their fees were so high. Therefore they maintain a fiction that what is obvious is not the full story.
I…
The blog’s 6-monthly review of major stock markets highlights their continuing volatility.
Last September, all the markets were down between 7% – 22%. Germany (dark green column) was the biggest loser, whilst the UK/US (blue, red) were least impacted…
Interest rates are key to the direction of the global economy.
But not in the way that was true during the 1982-2007 economic SuperCycle. Then, there was a global surplus of savings, due to the vast numbers of people in the Wealth Creating 25 – 54 …
Financial markets have become increasingly nervous in recent weeks, since the blog last reviewed developments in global bond markets.
Its conclusion then was that investors are worrying more about return of capital, than return on capital, as we trans…
An abrupt change of direction is never a pleasant experience in global financial markets. Yet unfortunately, the blog’s regular 6 monthly review suggests this has started to occur since March.
Investors are beginning to fear we may not be be entering…
Most of us have now heard of the PIIGS countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain). They are the ones causing the Eurozone debt crisis.
Today, the blog introduces the JUUGS (Japan, UK, USA, Germany, Switzerland). These are the major countrie…