When the pace of economic growth begins to slow and the outlook becomes more gloomy, it makes sense for investors to start shifting their equity investments away from cyclical sectors and towards defensive ones, even if you don’t think a recession is necessarily likely to ensue.
Rathbone Unit Trust Management introduces Rathbone High Quality Bond Fund to wider market
Fund manager Will McIntosh-Whyte shares the (pretty open) secrets that underpin how the Rathbone Multi-Asset Portfolio Funds are put together, and discusses why not all fixed income assets are created equal.
If you’re an income investor, don’t despair! Our fund manager Will McIntosh-Whyte tells Citywire that a decent – and growing – income is possible, if you are careful and realistic about your goals.
Action and adventure abounded in the summer holidays and it wasn’t all between the covers of a Robert Louis Stevenson novel. Our chief investment officer Julian Chillingworth takes stock.
Since pulling out of the global financial crisis, markets have been on one of the longest bull runs in history. Yet as wages stagnate, productivity slumps and living standards drop, large swathes of people in Western democracies feel left behind. Many of them are losing trust in capitalism itself.
It’s the middle of the 18th century and you are standing in a forest in what we now call Germany. There are elm and beech and alder and spruce and a cornucopia of mosses, lichens, shrubs, flowers and ferns. A mixed choir of birds fills the canopy with tumbling descants, while rabbits, frogs, slowworms and innumerable invertebrates dance below. Two children gather mushrooms from the thick forest floor while their mother collects kindling for the bread oven; their two domestic pigs forage for roots.
Stewardship director Matt Crossman explains how the idea of a responsible capitalism — where firms exist for the wider benefit of society — is nothing new.
At his penultimate meeting, outgoing President of the European Central Bank (ECB) Mario Draghi announced a series of measures to ease monetary policy in the listless region. The bank cut deposit rates by 10 basis points to -0.50% and will restart quantitative easing (QE) on 1 November. At just €20 billion (£17.7bn) per month it’s peanuts compared to historic QE – since 2015 the ECB’s bond purchases have totalled €2.65 trillion – but crucially the new programme has no set end date. Until inflation gets back to 2% and stays there, QE and zero rates are here to stay.