Under The Macroscope

In an otherwise light, newsflow week, the successful passage of the stimulus bill dominated. It was quite a result for the Biden presidency, especially as the full amount was passed! The final tweaks to the bill were very few. PLUS Matt asks Jabir, in light of the polarising Oprah interview with Harry and Meghan, who do we trust when it comes to shaping our knowledge of the worlds news?

The spat between the UK and EU has flared up again. The UK has unilaterally decided to extend the grace period for checks on food imports to N. Ireland till October (6 month extension). The EU is in a spasm with one official saying the UK’s new approach to everything is confrontation.

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US study showing the more aggressive of the newer Covid19 variants may be less dangerous than previously thought.

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Cuba announced it is starting final-stage trials of two new Covid19 vaccines which it has developed.

10y Government bond yields soared! On the back of this, we have witnessed a big spike in volatility across all asset classes. Couple this with month-end and, not surprisingly, volatility is compounded. So why the massive spike in yields? Listen in to the show to find out!

Chief strategist Jabir Sardharwalla and Matthew Pearce talk about the impact that the vaccine rollouts are having on the markets. With projected herd immunity status on the somewhat near horizon for the US and the UK, what does this mean for businesses resuming after lockdown restrictions are eased?

This week saw TESLA announce it had bought $1.5bn of Bitcoin (BTC). This sent the BTC price soaring over 20% from $39,400 to $48,000 in under 24 hours. MASTERCARD announced this week it is planning to give merchants the option to receive payments in cryptos later this year and it came as quite a surprise. But Mastercard has not commented which cryptos it intends to support, or indeed where, but has set out its 2019 “Principles for Blockchain Partnerships” framework.

Find out more in the latest episode of Under The Macroscope.

Skybound's Senior Research Analyst Ross Muller makes the case FOR cryptocurrencies while Chief Investment Strategist Jabir Sardharwalla is slightly more hesitant to fully trust the digital currencies just yet. Find out more about each of their reasons in the latest episode of Under The Macroscope.

The big news this week – and one which has dominated market volatility (see market performance below) - has been the short squeeze saga around certain companies, most notably GameStop (GME). There were many others too (such as AMC, BB, BBBY and EXPR). These stocks suddenly started soaring despite their ailing prospects. So what happened?

Matthew Pearce, Skybound Capital's communications and business development guru gets the low down on the global events affecting the markets from Chief Investment Strategist Jabir Sardharwalla. Listen in each week to find out the big headlines from the week that was.

Matthew Pearce, Skybound Capital's communications and business development guru gets the low down on the global events affecting the markets from Chief Investment Strategist Jabir Sardharwalla. Listen in each week to find out the big headlines from the week that was.

Matthew Pearce, Skybound Capital's communications and business development guru gets the low down on the global events affecting the markets from Chief Investment Strategist Jabir Sardharwalla. Listen in each week to find out the big headlines from the week that was.