I am not going to ask you about how your New Year resolutions are shaping up, but the observation above about the tenuous nature of many of them is a not unusual occurrence for many of us. Naturally, the same can happen with financial market predictions. Thoughts that appeared valid and respectful considerations about the upcoming twelve months, can seem by the end of January tarnished and facile. Such is the nature of financial markets.
As someone who needs glasses, I know firsthand that 20/20 vision and the ability to experience the beauty and clarity of life is amazing. As we embark on the start of a new year, clarity and foresight is exactly what investors are seeking, especially with the daily dose of unprecedented headlines we receive. In hindsight, the guidance our team of economists, strategists, and portfolio managers gave last year proved prescient as ~90% of our ten themes for 2019 were accurate.
Judging by the preponderance of retail sales offers throughout November in my email inbox, the rise and rise of ‘Black Friday’ should completely randomise the precise timing of this year’s Christmas retail spending. Similarly for those who think about financial markets, the three percent rise in pan-European indices during the eleventh month of this year – particularly when mated with the very low levels of volatility seen across the prices of many asset classes during the month – appears to have also pulled forward the traditional ‘Santa rally’.
October historically has always been a big month for investors. In my formative years back in the 1980s during one October, there was a major market crash (and weirdly simultaneously in the U.K. an extreme weather event in southern England), meanwhile those interested in older historical events will recall the events of October 1929 and the infamous capital market events back then. A lot has happened in the month of October that has just passed and whilst it is unlikely the history books will remember the tenth month of 2019 assertively, for investors thinking about prospects over the next year, it may have been critical.
The “Wizard of Oz” celebrated a magical milestone in August, returning to the town of its original screening to commemorate its eightieth anniversary. Decades after its release, many of the movie’s characters and themes provide parallels to today’s economy and financial markets.
I hope you enjoyed a good break over the summer holiday period, because there is a lot to think about over the final four months of 2019 and beyond.
The above is not a Presidential tweet but a musing from Donald rump’s time as a property baron and television personality. An experienced investor would undoubtedly agree – sometimes you have to walk away, take a loss or change a strategy.
With ‘fast fashion’ being so prevalent in today’s world, perhaps we should not be surprised that Oscar Wilde’s dictum looks a little slow as the world only racked up four successively positive months before a reversal. May 2019 will not go down in the financial market almanacs as anything other than a shabby month, with the regional pan-European share index falling around 5% and more than reversing any gains seen earlier in the quarter. Broadly speaking, this performance pattern in May – supplemented by the compression of sovereign bond yields – was repeated all over the world.
Thinking about everyone’s favourite subject, it was striking to read that a well-known UK consumer confidence index indicator released in the last few days was flat for the third month in a row, with an accompanying write-up that included the comment that ‘despite political carry-on in the Westminster bubble with the clock ticking on Britain’s eventual departure from the EU, consumers are holding firm and remain unshaken by the daily headlines of turmoil and intrigue’. Too right that there is a real and breathing UK economy still out there… and that the ongoing Brexit debate does not need to exclusively define the UK economy and its prospects.
Despite numerous headwinds, 2019 is gearing up to be a celebratory year with record-breaking achievements on many financial and economic fronts. In particular, in the United States we just toasted the S&P 500 as it celebrated the ten-year anniversary of the secular bull market in March.