Archive for Weekly Market Commentaries - page 20

• 7:11 pm
• Standard

This week the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia unsurprisingly still dominates. Optimism caused by the initial failure to capture the country quickly has given way to the fear that Russia still plans on capturing it, but slowly, and with wholesale destruction of cities with artillery and huge civilian casualties – a tactic used in previous wars in Chechnya and Syria.

• 5:19 pm
• Standard

This week Russian president Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. Despite weeks of diplomatic efforts, Putin has decided that Ukraine’s relationship with NATO, his ambition to restore Russia’s influence to the heights of the Soviet era and his growing unpopularity at home are worth the human and financial cost of a war.

• 9:43 am
• Standard

This week the inflation melodrama continued, with US inflation numbers reaching record levels. This set off another round of interest rate speculation with even talk of an emergency rate hike being needed immediately over the weekend.

• 8:13 pm
• Standard

This week was another tough one as stocks continued to sell-off. The reason is the same as last week; inflation keeps going up, so expectations of how aggressively central banks will hike interest rates keep rising.

• 12:15 pm
• Standard

This week US Fed chair Jerome Powell added to market volatility by saying the term ‘transitory’ should be retired from the discussion about interest rates.

• 8:47 pm
• Standard

This week there hasn’t been much for markets to get excited about. Headline inflation figures were up a bit, but the underlying data still suggests pandemic disruption is the main culprit.

• 5:56 pm
• Standard

This week the Bank of England caught a lot of people by surprise when it left interest rates unchanged.