Slow Horses now complete so we’re onto the latest series of Industry in the Morrison household. Everyone has different opinions on it and of course it’s a drama and not a documentary so it’s a little embellished around the edges but the nuts and bolts of what we do on a day-to-day basis are there in my opinion. As the show gets more popular, its quickly become the easiest way to explain (broadly speaking) what sales and trading looks like to friends and family which does help around Christmas t…

I’m a firm believer that you can tell a lot about a person by their Supermarket Meal Deal selection. A Sainsbury’s below the office has opened up this lunch option and its fair to say the selection has improved substantially in the past few years; you can even add Lucky Saint non-alcoholic beer as the ‘Soft drink’! I like to vary things, mixing it up between the classics and some of the quirkier numbers that catch my one – one thing that tends to be a staple is the prawn cocktail crisps! A very…

Starting a little different as we prepare to say a fond farewell. Tonight is the retirement party of Charlie Bridge, Founding Partner of Redburn Atlantic. Charlie has had a long and distinguished career. Starting as a blue button at Rowe & Pitman, he has graced the trading floors of institutions including Enskilda, Flemings and Commerzbank. However, for the last 21 years we have been fortunate to have worked alongside him at Redburn Atlantic. Charlie was always first in the door each day with a…

Slow Horses is just about the best thing on TV in my opinion. A brilliant, gripping drama filled with a sprinkle of comedy and takes me back to some of my Criminology days when there was a time when I thought I could give this whole Spy stuff a crack. Got me thinking about what similar qualities might a Spy and a Sales-Trader possess? Discretion? Working under pressure? Ability to digest lots of information? They are very different jobs and I’m certainly more Johnny English than James Bond but…

ASML goes straight to the top of my most disliked names having positively ruined what I had written planned to write for the Snapshot with an unscheduled warning ahead of their numbers tomorrow morning. ‘A relatively calm day’… ‘Stoxx 600 closed flat’ … ‘All awaiting LVMH’ nearly all scratched from the ledger! The -15% move in ASML did nearly all of the 80bp damage to the Stoxx 600 and it hit a number of names in the U.S too. There will be plenty of eyebrows raised at the order push out, the s…

I don’t’ know if anyone else has this but my absolutely #1 critical commuting rule is…do not speak to anyone. Its just about acceptable at the stations but a gentle head nod will suffice on the carriage when you see a client like I did this morning. Let’s be honest, no one (especially a client) wants to communicate as the clock just ticks past 6am on a cold and wet Monday morning and on quiet days like today and when earnings season hits us shortly it is one of the busiest times of day. With J…

Going to file this in the category of ‘things you don’t see very often’: Stoxx Oil & Gas vs Stoxx Basic Resources had its widest spread in performance (7.3%) since the 9th March 2020. If that isn’t the sort of dislocation that gives you a bit of life on a damp Thursday morning I don’t know what will. The main story remains China and I thinks it’s fair to call this week some of the most concerted, concise efforts to convince the markets that this time is real, significant and signals a turning p…

“Use it, or lose it” one of my favourite Referee sayings from my younger days playing Rugby in the driving rain and wind on a fairly waterlogged Scottish pitch. Fairly nostalgic but I heard it today in a completely different context as we had time to look at Q4 and more importantly our remaining holiday days left to take – no one wants to lose holiday days due to erm…not taking them! Q3 Earnings really kick off on the 10th/11th October so I’m dashing away next week though probably wont find wea…

Is this the turning point for China the question on everyone’s minds today.. and probably rightly so! News overnight of a ‘Stimulus blitz’ by China as Bloomberg described it across many areas from a cut to the 7 day RRR and Policy rate cut as well more support for the property market and some markets stability initiatives also. A lot to go through and digest though the market reaction on the face of it all quite orderly and somewhat predictable. Anything remotely exposed to China has been the l…

A ‘Monday-like Monday’ the best way to describe today as Equity markets failed to get into 2nd gear (Stoxx 600 +40bps) though that isn’t out of the norm for Mondays at the moment. A day to assess some poor European data, talk about the weather (which just so happens is equally as damp as the data) more than normal and to get things in order for the week ahead. A raft of European PMI’s one of the only things to grab from this mornings session – The main trend/theme change was that services PMI’…