Pessimism Fatigue – Markets rally

The market selloff and fear of last week was but a memory overnight as more positive feeling buoyed equities and risk assets and put upward pressure on bond yields. The S&P 500 is up 1.6% to 1315.99, the FTSE rose 0.7% and the other Bourses of Europe were mostly higher, the Euro is back above […]

Are there just too many bears for equities to go down?

I’m a student of history, economic history in particular, and it is this reverence for history that has me so deeply concerned for the long term future of the developed economies indeed the global financial system. But at certain times in this GFC it has become unfashionable to remind people of your view that the […]

Who’s sick of being pessimistic? Me and the market.

Earlier this month I said So we could see a de-coupling between economic outcomes and market performance particularly should quantitative easing recommence in the US, Europe and the UK I really think this is and remains a tradable investment theme in at least the first part of 2012 and the equity market, as represented by […]

More market noise but underlying global economy deteriorating

Euro volatility used to mean that the EUR/USD exchange rate had moved up or down and bounced around. These days it means that some European politicians has opened his or her mouth or, increasingly, some British newspaper has ”broken” a story late in the day which has got things moving. Such was the case again overnight […]

Equity Market Positioning Stretched

As I wrote earlier this morning I woke up feeling very different about markets than when I went to bed last night. Here is a few other things that helped colour my thinking this morning and while they don’t indicate that the only way is up they do suggest that pricing and positioning has become […]

Markets to bounce? – thoughts on Merkel, Sarkozy and Papendreou

I write this not with trepidation. Trepidation because it goes counter to what I have been writing lately and trepidation because it is even different to what I thought when I went to bed last night. It is still not a fully formed view but I would pose the question to readers, Could we have […]

Market Bounce coming?

Markets rallied a little further across Europe and the US on Friday evening which gives me further hope that the bounce that I wrote about might be coming on Friday is on its way. At the close of play the FTSE, DAX and CAC were up between 3 and 4% while the Dow and S&P closed up […]