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Next week’s vote on the divorce deal is likely to be defeated, and there is precious little time for an alternative before the Brexit deadline in March. The British parliamentary vote on Theresa May’s EU divorce deal will be on 15 January. The deal is likely to be rejected, as there has been little progress since December, when a first vote was called off for lack of support. The problem is that there remains no...

Next week’s vote on the divorce deal is likely to be defeated, and there is precious little time for an alternative before the Brexit deadline in March.The British parliamentary vote on Theresa May’s EU divorce deal will be on 15 January. The deal is likely to be rejected, as there has been little progress since December, when a first vote was called off for lack of support.The problem is that there remains no majority for any alternative. If there is no plan voted by parliament before the...

The CIO office’s view of the week ahead.The first week of the year delivered a series of conflicting signals and a complementary dose of volatility in markets. After 20 days of daily moves of over +/-2% in the S&P 500 in 2018, out of last week’s three trading days of 2019 alone, two were marked by daily moves of over +/-2%. In data, the December US ISM manufacturing index showed its weakest reading in two years, as businesses continue to worry about trade tensions. However, this was...

What is money, where does it come from and more importantly where does it go? At first glance, it might appear inexplicable and bizarre that our governments and our rulers have managed to keep their stronghold over the monetary system for 2000 years, especially when one thinks about the countless ways in which they abused that power and used their monopoly to the detriment of their own citizens. It was a mass delusion that facilitated this, a blind belief that they, and they alone, can...

Fed chair Jerome Powell still wants to “normalize” monetary policy in 2019.The Federal Reserve (Fed) raised the Fed funds target range (FFTR) by another 25 basis points (bps) on 19 December, as widely anticipated. The new FFTR range is 2.25-2.50%. This marked the fourth rate increase of 2018.There was no formal guidance about the next hike and clues were rather hazy. It seems like the Fed still wants to bring rates towards ‘neutral’ in 2019 (currently 2.75% based on the median Fed dot –...

The environment will remain challenging for EM currencies next year. Despite a dovish shift by the Fed and the temporary truce in the US-Chinese trade dispute, the global environment remains challenging for emerging market (EM) currencies. In fact, our latest EM FX scorecard, which ranks 10 EM currencies according to key criteria such as growth and vulnerability to external shocks, is still unable to identify a single...

It's always darkest before dawn, and dawn is not yet in sight.It was another eventful week in British politics, although there was still no meaningful progress on clearing the way for a smooth Brexit before the crucial deadline of March 2019. While a smooth exit remains our base-case scenario, uncertainty remains sizeable.PM Theresa May postponed the British Parliament vote on her Brexit divorce deal, and vowed to re-open discussions with European Union (EU) partners. However, things are not...

The environment will remain challenging for EM currencies next year.Despite a dovish shift by the Fed and the temporary truce in the US-Chinese trade dispute, the global environment remains challenging for emerging market (EM) currencies. In fact, our latestEM FX scorecard, which ranks 10 EM currencies according to key criteria such as growth and vulnerability to external shocks, is still unable to identify a single attractive EM currency among the 10 it monitors on a 12-month horizon.Being...

Three British entrepreneurs have created the world’s first insurance-backed peer-to-peer marketplace to rent almost anything, bringing the sharing economy to cameras, projectors, disco equipment, drones, hot tubs, kayaks and a lot more.Mass consumption has become a common complaint in modern life, as consumers increasingly feel that they need to acquire the latest gadgets, update their mobile phones frequently and own cars used on average for only 4 per cent of the day. Throughout our lives,...

Over the last years, Venezuela has become a modern poster child for the failure of socialism and with good reason. It offers an abundance of lessons and stern warnings for many western nations, but it also provides a very insightful and relevant reminder for individual investors too. Economic, social and human costs Within the space of 5 years, a combination of plunging oil prices and extreme socialist policies have brought the country to its knees, together with its increasingly...