Category: Market commentary & Uncategorized
The phrase ‘the world looked a dangerous place’ has been used many times to describe the status of the markets. Never has that seemed more true than in August.
In Northern Iran/Iraq the Islamic State continues to gather momentum and the world expressed outrage at the murder of US journalist, James Foley.
Category: Market commentary & Uncategorized
Where to start this month? Until July 16th it was an easy decision: the happy, smiling face of German Chancellor Angela Merkel as her boys lifted the World Cup with a 1-0 win over Argentina. A booming stock market, huge trade surplus – and a trophy from Sepp Blatter. What more could a country want?
Category: Market commentary & Uncategorized
June was a good month for British and Chinese manufacturing, a disastrous month for General Motors (GM) and sadly, the England team who can now be found on the beaches of the Algarve. At least they escaped the anger directed at South Korea’s players, who were pelted with toffees on their return to Seoul!
Category: Market commentary & Uncategorized
Some months we sit down to write this report and think to ourselves, ‘Not much happened really…’ And then you get a month like the one that’s just finished where pretty much everything happened!
Elections were held across Europe – and the big story was the rise and rise of the extremist parties, with UKIP topping the poll in the UK and the Front National doing equally well in France.
Category: Market commentary & Uncategorized
The month got off to a gloomy start, especially if you are a Guardian reader. Five signs the global recovery may be an illusion was the headline on one of its main analysis articles, which pointed out that the world of 2014 was not very dissimilar to the world of 2004 – when (we now realise) it was all starting to go wrong.
Category: Economy & Market commentary & Uncategorized
We started last month’s bulletin in the Crimea, with Russian troops in de facto control of the peninsula. Well, the Crimea is now part of Russia again and the collected denunciations and threatened sanctions of William Hague, John Kerry and the European foreign ministers will do nothing to change that.
