We are living through an extraordinary period that in many respects has no parallel in the history of financial markets. These are some of the striking features of current market conditions as we enter the new decade, 13 years on from the global financial crisis of 2008:
It is now more than a year since the novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, was identified in China and more than ten months since the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The virus has taken an enormous toll on the health of the world population with over 100m cases and a tragic 2.24m deaths reported. COVID has also created economic instability due to the lost productivity and lower consumption brought on by continued lockdown measures in many parts of the world.
All News is Good News, Even if it is Bad? For a number of years we have witnessed asset markets in which there seems an unshakeable confidence in their continued upward movement. Whatever vicissitudes may unfold, the comfort blanket of government support has sustained the view that “the cavalry will always arrive”. The outbreak of […]
Semiconductors: A Changing of the Guard “While an early chip from the 1970s could fit thousands of micrometre-sized transistors, today’s most advanced chips are a complex web of billions of transistors, the smallest of which are just 10nm. To get some idea of how small that is: your fingernails grew 10nm in the time it […]
