Knowledge and insight

We’ve always been a nation of shopkeepers and spendthrifts. But how we get our retail fix today is dramatically different to even five years ago, let alone the turn of the millennium

When facts become contested emotion unseats the rule of reason, muses chief investment officer Julian Chillingworth. And emotion is the enemy of compromise.

As society struggled to get back on its feet in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, one thing was clear: society needs the investment industry to be active and responsible. For many, this meant thinking about signing the Stewardship Code, and upping their game on proxy voting and engagement with underlying companies. For us, this created further incentive to refine our existing approach. Since then, responsible investing has become mainstream and over 2,000 asset managers around the world are now signatories to the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investing (PRI).

Owing to its size and influence around the world, what happens in the US economy has important implications for financial markets everywhere. 

The Donald has ratcheted up tensions in the trade stand-off just when a resolution was so close you could taste it. Our chief investment officer Julian Chillingworth ponders whether investors are right to shrug it off as gamesmanship.

Quality hasn’t just deteriorated in the sterling-denominated corporate bond market, but the lowest-rated BBB segment has also grown substantially as a proportion of the euro and US dollar investment-grade markets, which are both far bigger. If the rate of downgrades in the next recession is similar to the rate in the previous one, the next rung down in the bond markets – high yield debt markets – could get swamped.

American stocks roared back from last year’s setback at a pace rarely seen. Our chief investment officer, Julian Chillingworth, puzzles over the diabolical VIX index and explains why he thinks markets could be getting ahead of themselves.

…but be wary of lower-quality bonds

Ten years ago this month, the American stock market, stricken by the global financial crisis, bottomed out and started one of the longest upward market trends in history. Now, a decade on, Rathbone Income fund manager Carl Stick thinks it’s appropriate to talk about change.