Nothing continued to happen last week (and the week before that, for that matter). Apart from two outlying and positive market moves, that is, the Nasdaq went up and so did Japanese equities, for reasons that couldn’t be more different.

As John Wayne said in The Lucky Texan (1934), “It’s quiet out there. Ain’t natural”. That seems to sum up what many traders and managers feel about markets at the moment, as the noisy post-COVID data environment continues to confuse.

April was a muddle through month where most markets ended where they started, some having moved about a bit more than others. The Nasdaq, and by extension the US market, continued to be the lightning rod for risk, but ended the month just in positive territory. Emerging markets were slightly down, while the biggest winner was Japan.

Jonathan Tolub provides a primer on Andrew Hunt’s recent research, and views on US banks and Asian economic activity in particular.

After a relatively quiet few weeks the financial newswires have sprung back into life with positive US earnings surprises, another distressed US bank and an Australian inflation print that appears to have something for everyone.

Jonathan Ramsay and Jonathan Tolub discuss the upcoming Portfolio Construction Forum Finology Summit 2023, which will be on Wednesday May 3rd 2023. If you are interested in attending the Finology Summit live or online, contact Paul Carrington at [email protected]

Markets have been remarkably well behaved since Easter, as most markets are up by 1-2% across the board with very little volatility.

With many markets closed for a few days either side of Easter and market liquidity being generally very low, the financial news been mercifully subdued (including this weeks US CPI print). There was, however, mini-scare at the end of last week as a number of jobs related reports came out suggesting that the overheating US economy might be slowing down.

Markets have calmed down a great deal in the last two weeks and more recently have mounted a bit of a recovery, with US tech and emerging markets leading the way

Early last week a much-awaited inflation gauge in the US confirmed that inflation remained ‘sticky’, and that the pace of increases might even be accelerating again. For the second week in a row a hawkish and normally market moving Fed speech that should have seen yields go higher was overshadowed by events in the banking sector that had exactly the opposite effect