As widely expected, the European Central Bank kept the parameter of its monetary policy and forward guidance unchanged at today’s meeting. However, the ECB acknowledged that recent indicators point to a moderation in growth momentum whilst remaining consistent with a solid and broad-based expansion of the euro area economy. The… Read More »
State Street Global Exchange today released the results of the State Street Investor Confidence Index® (ICI) for April 2018. The Global Investor Confidence Index increased to 114.5, up 3.0 points from March’s revised reading of 111.5. Investors across all regions expressed an appetite for risk, with the North American ICI… Read More »
Yves Longchamp -
On Wednesday evening European time, we will be watching the Federal Reserve monetary policy decision with interest. Basically, it should not surprise anyone. Virtually all financial market participants expect the benchmark rate to increase by 25 basis points. In our opinion, this is also the most likely decision, as it… Read More »
In reaction to today’s European Central Bank (ECB) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, Timothy Graf, head of macro strategy for EMEA at State Street Global Markets; Brendan Lardner, active fixed income portfolio manager at State Street Global Advisors; and Antoine Lesné, head of EMEA strategy and research for SPDR ETFs… Read More »
Today Ocado Technology (the technology division of Ocado, the world’s largest online only supermarket) is revealing the world’s first AI-based fraud detection system for online grocery purchases. The new system relies on an advanced machine learning algorithm developed by Ocado Technology using TensorFlow and the power of Google Cloud. The… Read More »
Three immediate comments1 – The outcome is clearly in favor of populism with the 5S movement at 34%, Lega (former Northern League) at 16% and Brothers of Italy at 4%.2 – Democratic parties that used to govern in the past are out of the picture. Forza Italia (Silvio Berlusconi) was… Read More »
What is your initial reaction to the outcome? No major reaction in our portfolios since our positioning was already implicitly discounting such risk. We had short future positions on BTPs in our Euro fixed income portfolios (Oyster EURO Fixed Income and Oyster Multi-Asset Absolute Return EUR), we had put option… Read More »
As the Five Stars Movement has shelved its plan for a Referendum about the euro membership, markets have relaxed about the Italian elections with spreads against Germany still close to two-year lows. The most likely scenario is one of an inconclusive election, followed by weeks of negotiations and a coalition… Read More »
In reaction to today’s comments from Jermone Powell, chair of the US Federal Reserve (Fed), Michael Metcalfe, global head of macro strategy at State Street Global Markets; and Sophia Ferguson, senior portfolio manager for active fixed income and currency at State Street Global Advisors, offer their views. Metcalfe comments, “Powell’s… Read More »
Andrew Wilson -
Recent market turbulence highlights market sensitivity to firmer price and wage data, however we do not think investors should wed their investment outlook to today’s data alone, not least given it is clouded by methodology changes and weather-related distortions. Today’s firmer-than-expected print, which is in some sense encouraging given it… Read More »
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