Under The Macroscope

Matt and Jabir speak about the conflict in Gaza and the human, economic and social ramifications. We’re all also aware of the acute housing shortage across major cities internationally and we take a look at how governments are fighting back. The NFIB small business survey showed “jobs hard to fill” hit record levels. “Finding qualified employees remains the biggest challenge for small business and...

New jobs created totalled just 266,000 when the market expectation, with good justification, was for something closer to a million! To add insult to injury, there was a big, downward revision to March’s payroll of some -140,000.

Have low defaults stymied productivity? Like a magic show, Central Banks (CBs) have become the magicians while the audience is everyone else (Government, Markets). Default rates are not far away from their lowest (2007 before sub-prime started to blow up). Today they are only c3.5% - despite enduring Covid19, endless fiscal and monetary stimulus, rising yields and upwardly rising inflation. Debt h...

Matt and Jabir chat about the inward investment into Cape Town by global retail giant Amazon. They also touch on the spectacular rise and fall of the European Super League and what it means for the leagues and clubs in general.

It has been a heavy week with releases around Growth (GDP), Retail Sales and Inflation. In a nutshell, they are all rising! Biden’s stimulus package ($1.9TN) is having an immediate effect as evident in the retail sales data. The latter jumped almost 10%. Even excluding Autos, it was still up a formidable 8.4%. The impact was across the board. China’s GDP data released today showed very healthy pro...

It is with huge sadness that we learnt of the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Married to the Queen for over 70 years. Sweden has completed its first study into a digital currency (“e-krona) : it concluded that it might take a lot longer to enact than initially thought and the current pilot won’t be finished till early next year. The study acknowledged that although the usage of cash is...

Matt and Jabir chat about the year to date and discuss the market growth from this time last year up until now.  Join us as we take a look at all of the major markets, and the sectors that influence their growth.

Flash PMI readings, measuring activity for Manufacturing and Services are out for March. The Manufacturing data is very strong for the UK, EU and US. Each has a different story - So find out more in this episode of Under The Macroscope.

The Western world is in a tizz and all over the possibility the EU is about to get into a war, a vaccine war, in which it’s threatening to place curbs on vaccine exports from the EU to other regions / countries. . This week we witnessed Brazil, Russia, Turkey all raise rates. It’s also believed Nigeria and South Africa could follow suit. Meanwhile, amongst Developed markets, Norway has stated it w...

In an otherwise light, newsflow week, the successful passage of the stimulus bill dominated. It was quite a result for the Biden presidency, especially as the full amount was passed! The final tweaks to the bill were very few. PLUS Matt asks Jabir, in light of the polarising Oprah interview with Harry and Meghan, who do we trust when it comes to shaping our knowledge of the worlds news?

The spat between the UK and EU has flared up again. The UK has unilaterally decided to extend the grace period for checks on food imports to N. Ireland till October (6 month extension). The EU is in a spasm with one official saying the UK’s new approach to everything is confrontation. . US study showing the more aggressive of the newer Covid19 variants may be less dangerous than previously thought...

10y Government bond yields soared! On the back of this, we have witnessed a big spike in volatility across all asset classes. Couple this with month-end and, not surprisingly, volatility is compounded. So why the massive spike in yields? Listen in to the show to find out!

Chief strategist Jabir Sardharwalla and Matthew Pearce talk about the impact that the vaccine rollouts are having on the markets. With projected herd immunity status on the somewhat near horizon for the US and the UK, what does this mean for businesses resuming after lockdown restrictions are eased?

This week saw TESLA announce it had bought $1.5bn of Bitcoin (BTC). This sent the BTC price soaring over 20% from $39,400 to $48,000 in under 24 hours. MASTERCARD announced this week it is planning to give merchants the option to receive payments in cryptos later this year and it came as quite a surprise. But Mastercard has not commented which cryptos it intends to support, or indeed where, but ha...

Skybound's Senior Research Analyst Ross Muller makes the case FOR cryptocurrencies while Chief Investment Strategist Jabir Sardharwalla is slightly more hesitant to fully trust the digital currencies just yet. Find out more about each of their reasons in the latest episode of Under The Macroscope.

The big news this week – and one which has dominated market volatility (see market performance below) - has been the short squeeze saga around certain companies, most notably GameStop (GME) . There were many others too (such as AMC, BB, BBBY and EXPR). These stocks suddenly started soaring despite their ailing prospects. So what happened?

Matthew Pearce, Skybound Capital's communications and business development guru gets the low down on the global events affecting the markets from Chief Investment Strategist Jabir Sardharwalla. Listen in each week to find out the big headlines from the week that was.

Matthew Pearce, Skybound Capital's communications and business development guru gets the low down on the global events affecting the markets from Chief Investment Strategist Jabir Sardharwalla. Listen in each week to find out the big headlines from the week that was.

Matthew Pearce, Skybound Capital's communications and business development guru gets the low down on the global events affecting the markets from Chief Investment Strategist Jabir Sardharwalla. Listen in each week to find out the big headlines from the week that was.