MPS Bulletin: Deep Heat
AI stocks have received something of a bloody nose, as the Chinese upstart DeepSeek has led investors to question whether the US hyperscalers’ plans to invest 270bn USD this year into AI alone, is money well spent. Having already received the thumbs up from legendary VC and tech investor Marc Andreessen, of the eponymous Andreessen […]
MPS Update: Superficially Sentient and the Magnificent Bribe
In a remarkably prescient piece, the social critic Earnest Mumford in ‘Technics and the Nature of Man’, unnervingly anticipates a scenario which could easily pass for today, over half a century ago – long before smart phones or CoPilot. Whilst lengthy, it is worth reproducing some of his sentiments; The last century, we all realise, […]
MPS Bulletin: Santa Falls
As widely anticipated, the Federal Reserve reduced the official interest rate by 0.25% in the last meeting on the year. What was perhaps less widely anticipated was the market reaction, a historic sell off by some measures, in response to Jerome Powell’s determinedly ‘hawkish nature’. Financial markets had been pricing in 4 interest rate cuts […]
MPS Bulletin: The Bull Market nobody is talking about
Often described as a chameleon asset, (one whose performance can be influenced by ever changing causal factors), bullion has quietly been grinding higher without seemingly attracting much by way of headlines. In fact, having passed 2500 USD for the first time in history, in a resurgent fashion, we’re a little bemused it hasn’t garnered more […]
Asset Allocation Bulletin – Starting Gun
This was one of Lenin’s weeks – when a decade’s worth of events all fell upon one unsuspecting row on the calendar. An attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, and then the President himself taking a fall. What are the likely stock market consequences? BIDEN BOWS OUT President Biden is withdrawing himself from the 2024 […]
Regime Change: Taking Tech Down
SUMMARY Our Quad Regime has indicated a change in ‘regime’ – moving from ‘Reflation’ to ‘Goldilocks’, although we must caution though, goldilocks with defensive characteristics. In doing so, we will sell the US tech related equity positions, and raise cash until we have a better grip on employment data in particular. INCREASING DRY POWDER Just […]
Asset allocation trends – May 2024 update
The importance of getting the asset allocation decisions right has long been engrained in the thinking of investors and financial professionals. The difficulty has been how to get outside the realm of the subjective and have an approach that delivers consistently. A large body of academic research – much of it by my partners and […]
6 Trends in Asset Management Outsourcing
As the asset management industry continues to evolve and face new challenges, outsourcing investment management to outsourced managed portfolio solutions (MPS) as part of a top to bottom tech stack, has become an increasingly popular solution for financial advisers. With a suite of MPS, advisers can expand their investment capabilities while freeing up time for […]
Kami-Kwasi Budget
Last week the new UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced a “mini-budget” package of tax cuts, subsidies and benefits, designed to ease consumer pain and less convincingly, to attempt to resuscitate UK growth; Markets didn’t take to the news well and reacted by pushing the Pound and gilt prices sharply lower, having taken a view that […]
Central Banks Conundrum
ACADEMIC RESEARCH HAS BEEN SUPPORTIVE FOR INVESTOR INTEREST The root causes for such a high level of inflation are in part endogenous, in part exogenous. After the Global Financial Crisis, the US central bank “the Fed” injected very large quantities of money into the system by bailing out banks, buying Treasuries, bailing out mortgage agencies. […]