Opinion

There you are with all those fancy indicators like yield curves, ISM Manufacturing, and housing markets. They all point in the same direction, down! But the incoming US macro numbers are in no way pointing to a recession, nor to a soft landing. Spend it!

This week’s adoption of the updated EU regulation for long-term investment funds, known as Eltifs, raises hopes and expectations, both at a European level as well as on the ground in Luxembourg. Now it’s up to the industry to deliver. The fund ecosystem in the grand duchy is keen to embrace this opportunity.

The US economy created more than half a million jobs in January. That was almost three (!) times more than expected. Most importantly, such a job growth figure does not fit with a coming recession, but neither does it fit with a much hoped-for soft landing. On the contrary.

It indicates that the US labour market is still glowing even after 450 basis points of tightening.

During my student days in the late 1980s, I was one of the few students who had access to an Apple II computer. A big difference between Apple’s word processor then and the average word processor on a PC was WYSIWYG, acronym for What You See Is What You Get. On the screen, the document was visible just as it was printed. Even then, Apple was way ahead of the competition. 

The latest ‘chart of the week’ shows a difference between market expectations of what the Federal Reserve will do and what the central bank wants, a fascinating development, says True Insights’ Jeroen Blokland. The Fed as well as the European Central Bank will update their views on interest rates later this week.

Forget about all those bars of gold that are heavily guarded because they are incredibly valuable. Credibility is the most valuable asset for a central bank. It is the monetary version of what goodwill is to a company. In this respect, the ECB could learn a lot from the Fed. An analysis.

The more credible a central bank is, the more effective its policy is. With high credibility, a central bank needs to do less actual work to achieve the desired result: bludgeoning inflation. More words, and less action, so to say.

A post recently appeared on my Bloomberg timeline that headlined: ‘BoE’s Bailey Says Truss Risk Premium on UK Assets is Gone’. Being overweight in some UK assets, I wondered what Bailey bases this on.

So I look at some asset classes that were hit hardest by the panic sell-offs caused by then finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget. Just a refresher: that mini-budget consisted mainly of tax cuts for high-income earners that were not compensated elsewhere in the budget.

Data analysis of transactions of Universal Investment’s institutional clients shows that alternative investments once again proved to be supporting pillars of their portfolios, writes Sophia Harrschar, the firm’s country head Luxembourg in her latest contribution as IO knowledge partner. Private equity scored with 9.8 percent in the one-year range and with 10.3 percent per annum over five years.

“The UBS phase is over,” a Quintet banker told me last week.

The demand for ESG-compliant investments is growing, especially among professional investors. The urgency of climate change and the regulatory requirements are driving the development for responsible investing.