Very little inspiration from me today with apologies but these markets are tricky and sometimes it’s hard to keep up. I do feel for investors having to juggle results days and all the trials and tribulations that they bring and I just don’t know how anyone is supposed to keep on top of them all. Intraday numbers should be banned too, there is just no need. The one thing that will please the majority of investors is that the path of least resistance for Equities right now is higher – little by…

It’s been 3 days and I haven’t mentioned the rugby result…now that’s self-restraint. Having watched the game back what struck me was how important leadership is. You had to look no further than Jamie Ritchie who got the crucial final turnover in the 80th minute but after the final whistle was already cooling the hype and instead calmly shifting focus to the next match. Impressive. Leadership has been lacking of late in European equities but Banks do continue to catch the eye, Intesa again mak…

Having spoken about inflation for the best part of 12months the word that dominated this morning was deflation. Sadly not in the way many would hope with markets eagerly awaiting continued signs of a fall in inflation to aid the calls for a soft landing but thanks to the Chinese spy balloon which was swiftly deflated by the U.S. Airforce over the weekend in quite spectacular style it must be said. Not a huge amount to worry about here we don’t think but it does once again bring the Chinese/U.S. relationship into question again, with Blinken not travelling to China anymore and officials saying that a trip for him is up to China to announce.

Coffee at the ready this morning to deal with the busiest earnings day, the follow on from the Fed meeting and bracing for the BoE and ECB to update the market. Hopefully you managed to avoid Starbucks and find a Costa though as it was reported this week that a Medium Cappuccino has 5x the amount of caffeine than the equivalent at Starbucks  – talk about short changed!

You’ve heard of the difficulties of finding a needle in a haystack but have you heard of trouble in finding a 6mm by 8mm Radioactive capsule along a 1400km stretch of Western Australia? Now I’ve not got any special ‘finding’ skills but if those were the options given to me I’d certainly be asking them to pile up the haystacks! Earnings season can be quite like that and there was a definite sense of ‘there’s just too much out’ this morning and finding the real important movers certainly a tricky challenge and one that is only going to get harder as we continue this week.

So another Monday spent looking forward rather than at the current situation but all feel very intertwined as a little bit of fear creeps in and Equity markets slide. The Stoxx 600 closed down 20bps but felt heavier for much of the day before some late optimism on a quiet day for European Equities. Certainly a few nerves out looking to the blockbuster 24 hours from Wednesday evening and it felt like a worthwhile task catching up with our Economist ahead of the event.

Does anyone actually enjoy earnings season? I’m guessing the answer is no, so much noise, so many names (and always on a Thursday) so I came up with a new idea – there should be 5-10 a day, every day for the whole year and the worst performing company the year before gets to pick their days first. Friday’s in August are hot property, so are Bank holidays but the top pick is usually that dead week between Christmas and New Year. They are tradable too, so you can pay to swap days with another company if you’re keen or less keen to update the market on how you’re doing.

A bit of Tam o’ Shanter, To a Mouse and of course the Address to a Haggis is on the cards tonight and for those that do not know what I am talking about – shame on you. It is of course Burns night and although you’d rather not know goes in a haggis it is delicious. My Dry January is still going strong and I have yet to see a non-alcoholic whisky and I expect that is for good reason.

Today was a day that I was very tempted to try out this ChatGPT malarky and see what the fuss was about. ‘Please write a little anecdote followed by a summary of what happened in European Equity markets’. Given how dull today was I think even it may have struggled but I was put off the idea by a 22 year old university student in the U.S., Edward Tian who has fought back against the software that has become so popular in recent weeks by creating his own app GPTzero which uses ChatGPT against itself to identify whether AI has been involved in creating text and singles out the fraudsters.

Does a juice diet still count if you polish off a bag of Walkers Salt & Vinegar crisps when no one is looking? Asking for a friend, because I’m obviously sticking to this strict diet but there were moments today when it felt like I was running out of energy and the market reflected this too. The Stoxx 600 opened lower and drifted throughout the day to close down -1.55%, the worst day of the year thus far. There wasn’t really anything new out today that caused this move lower, instead it felt like (for the first time in a while it must be said) we looked to the U.S. for guidance, and followed their move after we left.