MARKETS HAPPY HOUR PODCAST

In today's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we were delighted to feature David Miller, Director of Investments at Conficap based in Finland. David is a long-term commentator and markets expert, having spent years as a portfolio manager, most recently at Quilter Cheviot in London. He has written a regular market newsletter for many years, and currently it is called "Northern Lights" – always a stimulating and riveting read. We start with our usual analysis of inflation, and David shares his insights from a low-inflation, relatively high tax jurisdiction, and we return to the US analysis of wage inflation which shows that lower end earners have seen their wage inflation trail that of higher earners, which only accentuates the K shaped inequality in US markets. We move then to interest rates, and the consolidating probability around a rate cut trajectory in the US, and compare it to the current viewpoint in the Eurozone, where the risk of overheating is significantly different. We turn then to the somewhat unusual behavior of bond markets, whereby long term government yields remain elevated, even in Japan, which indicates a shift that has not been seen for decades. We reflect on the reasons for this shift – suggesting that it shifts the definition of government bonds as a risk free asset, but by the same token also presents them as reasonable ways to generate a yield, while inflation remains subdued. This may alter the use case for bonds as investors learn how to price in the looming fiscal problems with developed economies. Coming to equity markets, there has been a spot of indigestion in the US in the aftermath of a volatile but ultimately flat November and the declaration of a Code Red by Open AI as it downs tools to focus on its core models, sensing encroachment from Google and others, has only sparked more concerns of cracks in the AI ediface. Earnings present a robust picture with the virtually all sectors displaying a high percentage of components beating expectations, and healthcare at the top of the list. This is positive news and suggests there could be a broadening of market strength beyond the concentration that has been in place year to date. The flipside of this positive story has, of course, been what strong earnings mean for corporate costs, and what this in turn means for labor. Finally after a discussion of the Northern European perspective on the current global economy – compressed into an impossibly short space of time, we move to other asset classes that are of interest – David comments on his positive view on India as well as gold, and we discuss some of the key dynamics that drive that.