Lots of adulting from me this weekend with the highlight (it’s not really a highlight) getting a bunch of posters and pictures to the framing shop (I found one that wasn’t outrageously expensive too!) Up there with one of the most impossible tasks I’ve had in a while but having stared at me for a number of weeks (months) it was time for action. That sort of feels appropriate to the current situation within markets as having had Trump at the helm for nearly a month, we’re getting to what feels l…

“Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now!” did spring to mind earlier this morning, with European markets off to a blistering start as sentiment surrounding a possible Russia-Ukraine ceasefire picked-up on reports that Pres. Putin agreed in a phone call with Pres. Trump to begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. If that weren’t enough, a packed corporate earnings schedule gave us little time to breathe, and outsized moves from heavyweights Adyen +14% and Siemens +6% added further momentum behind today’s…

Our ever-popular midweek charts are always full of interesting revelations, and I was quite surprised earlier to learn that the Czech Republic consumes the highest volume of beer per capita in Europe. In all fairness, I’ve always thought that Budweiser Budvar is a stellar pint (nothing close to Guinness of course, and at roughly 69 CZK per glass, who could blame them? Moving from one surprise to the next, markets were caught off guard earlier as arguably the week’s main event caught markets off…

A bit of a quieter session earlier led me to the following article which includes a story about an unfortunate individual who is considering the purchase of an entire landfill site in an attempt to locate a hard drive containing thousands of Bitcoins that was disposed of back in 2013. An ambitious task for sure (“needle in a haystack” springs to mind), but I suppose you can’t really blame him given the run which the digital asset has had over the past twelve years! As mentioned, today’s session…

After two consecutive Mondays of major market-moving events, Trump’s tariffs on China last week and the widespread emergence of DeepSeek the week before, it did feel almost unusual starting this week on a quieter note. Weekend headlines shifted to sports, with the Six Nations in full swing and the 59th Super Bowl taking place in Louisiana. Never one to shy away from the spotlight, President Trump attended the latter, becoming the first sitting president to do so. However, his focus may have bee…

February has already been quite a long month just 3 days in. Trump is really getting going and its fairly tiring trying to keep up with it all. Earnings in Europe once again took the spotlight and outside of that the broader picture feels quite tentative. We’ve had a good start in 2025, consolidating a bit here and trying to find the next catalyst but it seemed the market was quite happy with that backdrop with the Stoxx 600 ending the day at the highs but only +50bps. A big theme that remains…

I have started unsubscribing to the barrage of emails I get every day instead of just deleting them on a daily basis. It can take a little bit longer than the standard delete but after just three days my inbox is cleaner, less noise, less offers from ‘Telegraph Cruise Deals’ (how they got my email I don’t know) and more time for the important stuff! In turn Trump Media’s Truth Social feels like something I might have to sign up to given 2025 feels sure to be dominated (more than ever) by headli…

It’s certainly not my favourite word in the dictionary… I struggle to spell it most of the time. Tarrif’s, Tarriff’s, Tariff’s the name of the game today as Trump delivered what had long been touted as his first moves in that nature against Mexico, Canada and China but it came with significant threats against Europe and, the fact the details of them weren’t known, possibly hurt the most today. Whether these are negotiation chips being played or more long-term tariffs we will only find out in ti…

Tonight is pretty much as close as it gets to Christmas eve for British and French rugby fans as the Six Nations kicks of tomorrow in Paris. As a Scotland supporter it also usually marks the high point of the Six Nations, level on points with our rivals and all to play for over the next 7 weeks. Optimism is sky high and as we know the famous saying goes…. ‘It’s the hope that kills you!’ As I touched on yesterday there is certainly more hope around that Europe could be in for a good year and def…

“We have begun to turn things around” ….That could have been plenty of people on a day like today. Was it ASML’s Christophe Fouquet after their superb orders beat or was it Bernard Arnaud on the call post their disappointing numbers? Well, it was neither actually and in fact Rachel Reeves who was delivering a well-reported speech today on levers of growth the UK has to pull. A 3rd runway at Heathrow, development of the Oxford-Cambridge Corridor to create UK’s Silicon Valley and redevelopment of…