With the FED hiking its key benchmark rate one should expect interest rates to start rising across the yield curve. Liquidity conditions will tighten and the FED’s balance sheet is going to shrink as well. Hmmm, not so fast! The FED has two trillion problems still to solve, as its monetary policy framework is years…
So, they finally did it! The FED has just announced the first rate hike in almost a decade. Investors have reacted very positively so far… but will the enthusiasm last? There’s no fundamental reason to think it will, as the risks that accumulated during the ZIRP-era will now weigh on the US economy. Yesterday, Janet…
By Dom Wolf, Co-founder of investUP – the crowdfunding supermarket To nobody’s surprise, the exciting predictions for the world of crowdfunding in 2015 were not entirely wrong. In fact, most of them were entirely right. So have an early Christmas present, wonderful followers of all things crowdfinance. 2016 is going to be BIG. You heard…
At the end of October, further to a trip to India, I wrote a piece on these pages entitled India Online. There, and in my longer piece on investment opportunities in India in the November edition of the Master Investor magazine (India Faces the Future with Confidence), I argued that the potential for online commerce…
Back in September I wrote a piece for these pages (Airport Wars: Heathrow versus Gatwick) in which I explained why a third runway at Heathrow is the best outcome for the British economy but that this decision is politically fraught. I am not going to recycle the contents of that piece here but, in a…
By Dom Wolf, Co-founder of investUP – the crowdfunding supermarket A year goes quick, doesn’t it? Before you know it I’ll be dusting off the crystal ball and attempting to offer wisdom to predict the top trends in to watch NEXT year. But before we do that, I thought I’d take a look at how…
“When I am dead and opened, you will find Calais written on my heart.” – Queen Mary I This situation in Calais is not getting better – for anybody. Our truck drivers are daily running a gauntlet of missiles and human obstacles; the French police are at wit’s end; the good burghers of Calais are…
In 1744 in the Arabian city-state of Al-Diriyyah, a prominent Muslim cleric by the name of Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhabi came to Muhammad ibn Saud, the emir, asking for protection. This was granted and the two decided to ally themselves. Ibn Saud, from whom the current rulers of Saudi Arabia are descended, endorsed Ibn Abdel Wahhabi’s…
Last week I was at an event held by the FT where the guest speaker was Paul Johnson from the Institute of Fiscal Studies. He’s basically your go-to guy for government spending and was talking about the Autumn Statement. It seems we’ve got some bumps ahead, particularly in terms of pension expenditure. The UK spends…
Yesterday, the ECB extended its QE programme until March 2017, cut its deposit rate to -0.30pc and extended its asset purchases to municipal bonds. But with the market expecting an expansion of monthly purchases of around €15 billion and deposit rates to be cut by at least 20 bps, the policy announcement seems more like…
