Investment Officer Luxembourg

An innovative start-up in Luxembourg is looking to democratise housing markets by tokenising homes. Leveraging the blockchain, BlocHome lets its clients partially own the home they live in. On the part they do not own they pay rent. “The more you are owner, the less rent you have to pay.”

Last quarter, the Shanghai A-share Index did 11 per cent better than the S&P 500 and 15 per cent better than the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Still, sentiment on China is gloomy. The negativity is fuelled by large amounts of bad news. 

Valuation is often not the immediate trigger for a stock market turnaround. But it is a decisive factor in the amount of upward or downward potential for the market.

Re-rating

Since its low point in mid-June, the S&P 500 Index has risen 18 per cent. Over the same period, earnings per share rose by less than 2 per cent. There has thus been a considerable re-rating of equities over the past two months.

Eurozone small-cap equity funds cannot exactly count on warm interest from investors. The assets under management are considerably lower than for funds within the European small-cap category, for example. Moreover, investors have been withdrawing money from the funds on balance for years. This year, this waning interest will not change given the mediocre performance over the first seven months.

With stock market indicators showing rapid growth, what is happening? Is the bear market ending or is this just a regular bear market rally that will soon end? Some way we might be facing a recovery, others say that it’s just hopeless optimism.

European gas and electricity prices break records almost daily. The effect of energy on an economy is often underestimated. Almost all economic activity consists of energy, but in a different form. 

Luxembourg-based investment services provider IQ-EQ has named Shaun Geils as its global head of insurance.

Geils is stepping into a newly-created position intended to support IQ-EQ’s service offering from the firm’s London office in the United Kingdom.

The value of a currency is based on trust. The Russian sanctions have not helped the status of Western currencies. Yet crypto currencies also have difficulty escaping Western sanctions. The digital currency issued by China’s central bank, also known as the e-yuan, is succeeding. It may gradually gain market share from the dollar.