No royal rally can change Britain’s harsh economic realities November 29, 2017 What a difference 24 hours makes. Monday morning’s headlines in Britain were dominated by the familiar themes of Brexit-inspired political tension and economic listlessness – yet by Tuesday morning Brexit was briefly forgotten as the nation digested the news of a royal engagement. The Daily Mail’s coverage was typically low-key, with readers treated to a [...]
Can you compare tulips to Bitcoins? Central banks think so November 28, 2017 “Bitcoin is a sort of tulip”. So said European Central Bank (ECB) Vice President Vitor Constancio in September. For many that might sound like an odd statement to make, but those that know their history – and specifically the history of the stock market – will instantly know what Mr Constancio is talking about. For [...]
Markets crave political stability after the last few months November 27, 2017 Last week started with a potential political catastrophe as Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats were forced to concede that coalition negotiations with the Free Democrats and Green Party had collapsed two months after the German elections. The election result was bad enough for Mrs Merkel’s party – its worst election result since the end of World [...]
Brexit lurks behind Britain’s cautious Budget November 24, 2017 British Chancellors are used to facing intense scrutiny on Budget Day. Yet Philip Hammond spent weeks in the spotlight in the run-up to his November Budget. Brexiteers within the ruling Conservative Party want Theresa May to sack him because of his apparent lack of commitment to the Brexit cause, and for not being upbeat enough [...]
The opening shots of ‘Brexodus’? November 22, 2017 On Monday came two announcements that Britain was losing two European agencies. Two European agencies plan to relocate post Brexit The first was the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which will relocate to Amsterdam after Britain leaves the European Union (EU) in 2019, with the loss of an estimated 900 jobs. The second was the European [...]
Bitcoin: A bet on a bubble about to burst? November 9, 2017 What is Bitcoin and should we trust it? Five years after the cryptocurrency first burst into the public consciousness, many are still asking this most fundamental question. Nevertheless this month Leo Melamed, chairman emeritus of the world’s largest futures and options exchange CME Group, predicted the cryptocurrency will go on to become a new asset [...]
Paradise Papers reveal very little we didn’t already know November 8, 2017 How much impact are the Paradise Papers likely to have? Not much, is the answer — at least if the Panama Papers are anything to go by. Leaked in 2015, the Panama Papers, which also revealed the super-rich used offshore tax havens, caused some mild embarrassment but led to very little change. Then British Prime [...]
New US Fed chair could herald an economic boom November 7, 2017 We now know who US President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve is, and it’s not the incumbent Janet Yellen. This shouldn’t come as a massive surprise. After all, Ms Yellen was nominated to the position by former President Barack Obama. But at the same time, with US economic [...]
The $64 trillion question October 25, 2017 How much longer the stock market rally can continue has become the $64 trillion question. For a growing number of market observers, there’s a simple answer: not much longer at all. Markets, they argue, have becoming increasingly detached from economic fundamentals, particularly in Britain. It’s thirty years since Black Monday and while few would suggest [...]
Short of civil war markets have the measure of the Catalonian crisis October 25, 2017 Spain’s political crisis could have sent European markets into freefall last week. Instead they brushed it off with a continental shrug of the shoulder. While most European markets trended lower when Madrid said it planned to reassert its authority over Catalonia and impose direct rule over the autonomous region on Thursday, the falls were by [...]
