For the fixed income markets, it’s ultimately all about the creditor being able to pay back what is owed. As such, there is a lot we can learn from current gilt yields about investors’ perception of the UK government’s ability to repay the £2.6 trillion it has borrowed. Up until March, things were fine. Short-term yields were headed lower and two-year Gilts were to be had for 3.5%. Now, we are just over 4.5%. More worryingly, 30-year gilt yields are now at a 28-year high of 5

When the Euro Stoxx 50 index launched alongside the Euro in 1999, many doubted either would survive. Yet the index quickly established itself as Europe’s benchmark, and liquidity in the futures market soon rivalled the S&P 500 as a global equity trading instrument. Clearly, the two indices are very different. The S&P500 has ten times the number of constituents and currency moves play a major role in relative performance. Yet the points difference between the two became a surp

Earnings season is doing what it always does: beating expectations. Roughly a third of S&P 500 companies have now reported, with close to 80% delivering earnings ahead of forecasts and around two-thirds beating on revenues. On the surface, that looks reassuring. Markets tend to rise when companies outperform, and so far, the numbers are holding up well enough to justify the resilience in equity indices. The problem is that this is not a story about strength. Earnings growth i

According to the equity markets, the war in Iran is over. Moreover, whatever else we were worried about does not really matter when we are making record highs again. The mega-caps led the way, up an incredible 20% in April, but even staples joined the party on Friday in the kind of broad-based rally you typically see once markets believe the inflexion point has passed. Of course, the problem is that we are far from any agreement that would lead to a true and permanent de-esca

When two sides go to war, expecting a deal after the first negotiation was always going to be optimistic. We do not know what was said behind closed doors, but the US threat to close the Strait of Hormuz looks as much like a message to China as it does to Iran. At the very least, it raises the stakes well beyond the region itself. Discounted Iranian oil, increasingly settled outside the Dollar system, has become a quiet but important dynamic. Threatening that flow is not just

For investors, the war in Iran has been a disaster. Far from delivering a decisive blow through an extensive bombing campaign, Iran appears more entrenched than ever. It retains significant influence over the Strait of Hormuz, and that chokehold on energy could tighten further if tensions spill into the Bab al-Mandeb strait. Natural gas markets are under even greater strain, with LNG flows harder to reroute and increasingly vulnerable to shocks. Fertiliser prices are surging

You can’t win a game of chicken against someone with nothing to lose. Iran is facing an existential threat and has spent four decades preparing for asymmetric warfare. It appears to have neither the intention to de-escalate nor the incentive to stop targeting the Gulf’s exposed energy infrastructure. That reality seems to have finally sunk into financial markets last week. Oil prices are getting painfully comfortable above $100 a barrel. Equities are drifting towards correcti

It is fair to say that of all the available options for dealing with Iran, the current path must rank among the least attractive. Diplomacy was messy, containment imperfect, and strategic ambiguity uncomfortable. Instead, President Donald Trump appears to have kicked a hornet’s nest and now seems surprised that Iran can sting the world where it hurts. Iran does not need to win a conventional war to create significant disruption. It merely needs to make the environment unstabl

We are now in the second week of the war in Iran. Financial markets initially absorbed the bad news with surprising resilience, but sentiment has deteriorated quickly. Oil trading above $115 per barrel early this morning is wreaking havoc with inflation forecasts, pushing bond yields sharply higher and even reviving talk of rate hikes in the UK and the Eurozone. Global equities have finally got the memo and have sold off hard in the last few trading sessions. The Nasdaq is of

Markets dislike uncertainty. They dislike a disrupted oil supply even more. The escalation in the conflict between Iran, Israel, and the United States has injected both into the system at once. Equities are mostly lower this morning, oil prices are sharply higher, and gold caught an immediate bid. The geopolitical risk premium, largely dormant this year, is back on the screen. The focal point is the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global oil flows. Markets

We are halfway through the first quarter and two-thirds of the way through earnings season. The FTSE All-World Index remains within reach of its all-time highs, despite a notable rotation out of technology and growth stocks into value, Europe, and emerging markets. Leadership is shifting, but the market itself has barely flinched, which raises the obvious question: what comes next? Valuations, measured by forward price-to-earnings ratios, sit around 10–25% above long-term ave

The numbers are eye-watering. Over recent quarters, the largest technology companies have collectively committed close to $600 billion to artificial intelligence. Most of it is flowing into data centres, fuelling what is being billed as a once-in-a-generation investment cycle. And it seems far from over. According to McKinsey, a further $6 trillion could be spent by 2030. Much of this looks defensive. No one wants to be the platform that fell behind because it hesitated. But

I remember when you couldn’t give silver away. Down more than 70% from its 2011 peak, it languished below $20 an ounce for years. It wasn’t until the post-Covid everything-rally that it finally sprang to life, briefly touching $30 before slipping back again. Mainly an industrial metal, silver simply lacked the appeal of its more illustrious golden cousin. Then everything changed in the summer of 2024. As gold pushed decisively beyond $2,000, investors started to look at silve

With everything that is going on in the world, it’s easy to forget that we are in the middle of earnings season. So far, the aggregate picture is positive with the S&P 500 on track for 8.2% year-over-year earnings growth for Q4 2025, marking what would be the tenth consecutive quarter of profit expansion if realised. Of course, all eyes will be on the Magnificent Seven, with Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Tesla reporting this week. Investors seem to have already made up their min

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the US has arrested the head of a sovereign state, or that the Trump administration is openly flirting with the idea of invading Greenland, Colombia, Cuba, and perhaps even Mexico or Canada. What is startling, however, is not the geopolitics but the market response, or lack of one, with equities continuing to push on to fresh record highs. Europe and emerging markets have once again shone a little brighter than US stocks, in what is starti

The Budget is behind us, the Fed has cut interest rates, and the BOE is highly likely to follow suit on Thursday. Time to put this year to bed and focus on what 2026 may bring: The S&P 500 will top 7,000 but may also revisit 5,000, and possibly reach 8,000 too, because markets remain gloriously and stubbornly unpredictable. The Democrats will take both Houses in the midterms , because eventually, voters notice when they are worse off. Liverpool will win the Champions League

It was the week before St Nicholas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse, and the S&P 500 was within a whisker of its all-time high. Treasury markets are now pricing in a 90% chance of a Fed rate cut this month, and if Powell doesn’t trip over his own press conference, we may yet unwrap a tidy little year-end rally. Meantime, the S&P 500 equal-weight index is lagging its heavily concentrated, prettier cousin by almost 9% this year. Semicon

My wife and I were walking our dog by the river on Sunday when I noticed a rubber dinghy beside us, puttering slowly in the same direction. At first, I wondered why someone would take a boat when you could walk faster, especially when he wasn’t carrying anything. Then my wife pointed out that he was using a cup to bail out the water leaking into his boat. By the time we reached our destination a couple of miles ahead, the dinghy had almost disappeared from view far behind us.

Quite a few serious “crash-o-meters” are flashing red right now. The Buffett Indicator is sitting at more than twice its historical average, the Shiller CAPE for the S&P 500 hovers around 39 versus a long-term median of 16, and FINRA margin balances hit a record $1.18 trillion in October. Even the so-called Hindenburg Omen decided to make an appearance in late October. Any one of these has been enough to send markets spiralling in the past. So, why haven’t we crashed? Well, i

Investor psychology is a funny thing. Just a few months ago, markets were floating on a cloud of AI euphoria, soft-landing optimism, and the reassurance of an accommodative central bank. Every headline was good news. Hot payrolls? Proof of economic strength. Weak payrolls? The Fed will cut. Higher inflation? Consumers are resilient. Lower inflation? The Fed will definitely cut. In the last few weeks, however — and particularly on Fridays — sentiment has quietly shifted. It