True Potential Morning Markets

With many stock prices near all-time highs, corporate guidance appears to be having more influence upon the immediate market reaction, rather than actual earnings. Kevin Kidney, Head of Asset Allocation, looks at two stand out examples from this week in Tesla and Meta and what they reveal about the global corporate profitability cycle.

Manufacturing and services data shows an overall modest but positive economic trajectory for the UK. Paul Durrans, Investment Director, covers highlights from the report and how they may influence the interest rate policy discussions from the Bank of England as demonstrated by the recent comments from Huw Pill and Jonathan Haskel.

George Bell, Investment Director, discusses the services and manufacturing data in Japan and what it could mean for both future developments and broadening economic expansion. Also, we anticipate comments from the Bank of England’s Chief Economist Huw Pill today, and the insight it could provide to the Governor of the Bank of England’s positive perspective on inflation targets from last week.

Last week, stronger than expected economic data continued to reshape expectations on the outlook for interest rates. Moving into this week, Jeff Casson, Chief Investment Officer, discusses the continued volatility in both equities and sovereign bonds throughout April and the release of the US GDP data. Will US economic resilience continue and the data stay on trend for market expectations?

Our Chief Investment Officer Jeff Casson and Portfolio manager George Bell discuss the Federal Reserve's conundrum as they try to bring inflation down to their targets, amidst an economic backdrop of real wage growth and broadening economic growth across multiple sectors. Also a recent pivot on interest rate cut rhetoric from Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve, contrasts to Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England’s comments. What does the divergence in policy expectation on interest rates mean from a portfolio perspective?

Today, our Director of Investment Strategy, Chris Leyland covers the recent market movements in oil prices and the broader geopolitical and socio-economic drivers behind them. We also get a performance overview of asset markets and the impact of bond yields for investors and their returns.

This morning, Investment Director Paul Durrans looks at the UK inflation trends. UK inflation is on a downward trend, but services inflation remains a key focus for the Bank of England and the prospect of interest rate cuts. Also discussed are the latest comments from the Chair of the Federal Reserve who yesterday pulled back from the prospect of interest rate cuts anytime soon in the US.

This morning, we discuss recent UK employment data, outlining that although unemployment has risen to 4.2%, real wage growth has remained positive and this could cause the Bank of England to review interest rates in the coming months. How have markets reacted to the current economy and recent employment data?

Jeff Casson, Chief Investment Officer, addresses the recent geopolitical tensions and how it has affected markets, highlighting the important consideration of how asset markets are dealing with it and reflecting it? In the UK the focus will be jobs, inflation and retail data informing if and when a reduction in interest rates from the Bank of England will take place.

Our expert Investment Management team discuss the strength of US economic activity, its inflation data and the weak inflation report coming out of China. We also cover the European Central Bank’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged and discuss the encouraging economic data from the UK.