Campaigning resumes today in the British general election after three days of self-imposed reflection following the abominable events in Manchester last Monday night. Those who thought that it was a one horse race are in for a shock. According to a You.Gov poll last night the Tory lead over Labour is down to five percent.…
The budget document is unrealistic… Investors have been anxiously waiting for Trump’s budget proposals, to see if the fiscal shock they have been waiting for has any chance of materialising into a real deal. A big step came on Tuesday, when the government presented its budget for the 2018-2027 period. But, as with everything else…
You can tell a political ideology by its tax-and-spend policies. The two far extremes of the English-speaking political world – the new US populist right and the old UK corporatist left – are fashioning very different fiscal programmes. Might Post-Thatcherite Mrs May be the new Middle Way? The wealth of a nation In an interview…
Stretched Valuations Since the beginning of the year, I have been drawing the attention of the reader to the lack of volatility in U.S. markets, as such a high level of complacency is extreme by historical standards and is not supported by current fundamentals. Recently, the VIX (INDEXCBOE:VIX) fell below 10, which is a rare…
Historians, in their quest to make sense of the past, refer to two types of source material. Primary sources are those artefacts, diaries or documents created more or less at the same time as the events they depict. Secondary sources, as their name implies, are somewhat second-hand; they refer to books or articles written subsequently,…
He is 39 and-a-half years old. He came top at Sciences Po and ENA. He was Minister of the Economy before he engaged in a death-defying display of political trampolining which took him to the very top. He is clever, sophisticated and good-looking. And he is President-Elect of France, taking the keys of the Élysée…
In this instalment of The Macro Investor, I’m going to lay the foundations for a long position in cocoa. A solitary undertaking, sound investment comes from developing an alternative, contrarian, view and opposing the crowd when sentiment is extreme. When everybody is pessimistic about the prospects for a market, we hit ground zero. From that…
Last Thursday, the ECB decided to keep its monetary policy unchanged, as widely expected, and delay a significant change in its stance until the next meeting, as the political situation in France is still sensitive. While experiencing some volatility during the meeting, the euro is currently trading at almost the same level as it was…
The Tories are going to win the forthcoming British general election on 08 June handsomely if the opinion polls are to be believed. But what British election result would please the instinctively pro-Remain international financial elite? Warning: landslide coming When Mrs May called the UK general election on 14 April after a messianic walk through…
Juvenescence, Bill Gates and the markets It’s been a month since the Master Investor Show, and it’s been a busy one. Markets have basically gone nowhere, except for the post-Macron relief rally which, if you ask me, will soon peter out. I’ve been busy getting the Juvenescence book done, and I think I am now…
