I’m sure we are all glad to see the back of 2020 but how do we think 2021 will shape up? We are out of the EU and thus far our ports seem to be havens of tranquillity. The Covid vaccines have arrived, greeted by confusion over whether our expert team’s suggested gap between the first and second doses will work. I also read that India already has 50m doses of [...]
A year ago we were exalting Boris’s General Election success, comforted by the fact that we would, at long last, have a government that enjoyed a considerable majority – so important as we headed into a year during which post Brexit negotiations were to take place. Did we think that fully a year on those negotiations would be continuing with little sign of agreement? Probably not but it shouldn’t really come [...]
Quite why so much airtime is afforded the output of the Office for Budgetary Responsibility is beyond me. Its record is, quite frankly, abysmal and yet the Chancellor is bound by its forecasts when he sets his abacus to work. This time around the margins for error are enormous – even more so than usual. Over just four months the OBR has revised its forecast for the unemployment peak up to [...]
This Government certainly has the ability to dampen spirits. I know we are in precarious times but, God forbid, give us a break occasionally, please. Having locked us down again earlier this month Boris was firmly insistent that we will be released by no later than the 2nd December. How excited we all were when Pfizer-BioNTech announced their Covid vaccine had enjoyed a terrific success rate of 92% in its trials. [...]
So many things for the market to worry about. It is currently in one of those phases during which, even when presented with good news, it worries about the bad news that might follow. Faced with the sunny, bright uplands it searches for the heavy rain clouds over the hills. On the Brexit front there now seems every likelihood that an agreement will be reached. In these dire times when even [...]
I mentioned in my last blog on the 29th September how the cheapness of our equity market relative to the other global majors was beginning to be evidenced by overseas predatory interest in some of our companies. I suggested that, whilst the UK’s discount remained so wide we should expect that interest to grow, particularly from America. Not long after that article G4S, the FTSE 250 security firm, found itself on [...]
Back in February when we were first being shocked by the threat of Coronavirus, I wrote the following in my blog of the 27th: “I can’t help but feel the global governmental response to coronavirus is a panic-stricken knee-jerk. In fact, the common response is to quarantine vast numbers of people who could have been in contact with a discovered carrier. I write as someone whose medical knowledge is minimal, to [...]
If this were a game of charades you would expect me twiddle my hands around to indicate a book and a film. Both were pleasant little comedies if you enjoy that sort of thing. I’m not quite sure how you mime “government” but that is today’s borrower, and a big one too. Its debt has risen to 100% of GDP and is destined to rise further as the consequences of the [...]
Back In Town An unscheduled visit to the office on Thursday, necessitated by a thunderbolt blowing out the internet for most of the village on Wednesday evening, allowed me to see how the capital is recovering. I was pleasantly surprised by the numbers out and about but sad to see so many small enterprises closed. Train services are half what they were and not that full and, although the majority wore [...]
The Chinese stock market seems impervious to the travails of China itself, ignoring the ongoing war of words with Donald Trump on trade, the global pressures to rid the West of Huawei’s involvement in its infrastructure, accusations of misinformation re the Coronavirus origins in Wuhan, worldwide contempt for its stance on Hong Kong and much else beside. Indeed, the louder the global anti-China rhetoric becomes the greater heights the stock market [...]