Progressive

The Market Call: Week ending 01/11/24 - A 'big' budget - interest rates and equities both rise... 🎧https://lnkd.in/eFx6BfsZ Jeremy McKeown and Gareth Evans discuss, obviously, the UK Budget... Rachel Reeves may have (just) avoided a Kwarteng moment, but bond investors have been worried at the level of debt. Equity investors, on the other hand, have shown relief that AIM's IHT benefits are largely intact following Wednesday. But it was a "big" Budget with lots of new tax, and lots of near-term expenditure without lots of detail or reassurance around the detail or the benefit of much of that spending. Elsewhere, oil prices have tumbled, Japan has lurched to another political crisis, and gold, silver and bitcoin are all strong. US tech Q3 has been good, but not good enough for investors - stocks have fallen on relatively "in line" trading. In the UK, we've seen a flurry of small deals - three Progressive clients (Vertu Motors (VTU), Van Elle (VANL) and SDI Group (SDI)) all bought UK-based businesses where the vendors may have been hurrying to beat any Budget changes to Capital Gains Tax. Even discounting the Budget flurry, there does seem to have been a modest pickup in market activity. Following the recording of the podcast, Friday's US non-farm payrolls figure was weak...a gift for Donald Trump who can point to a weakening economy. Next week obviously sees the US election - plus rate decisions in both the UK and USA on Thursday, where 0.25% reductions are expected...although the lower-rate trajectory might be less clear than previously hoped. 

Read Jeremy McKeown's latest HyperNormalTimes: Asset Ownership Past the Event Horizon - How to Own Something and Be Happy https://lnkd.in/evHiZCSv Tomorrow's UK Budget. Next week's US election. Spiralling global sovereign debt. The potential collapse of neo-liberal consensus. Inflation. Gold. Bitcoin. Government bonds. Jeremy McKeown discusses all and ends with some ideas for how to think about and manage risk effectively in your attempts to preserve capital.

The Market Call: Week ending 25/10/24 - Global bond market volatility 🎧 https://lnkd.in/etvUq4fn Gareth Evans and Jeremy McKeown look back over a week mainly dominated by politics. Bond yields globally are rising despite central bankers in general telling us that inflation is dead, although some more hawkish comments came from the Fed. Meanwhile, the IMF raised a warning flag over the “disconnect” between risk levels and financial market performance…who knew ? Progressive clients with news included Gear4Music (G4M) with an update showing nice quarterly revenue progression and debt reduced, and Thruvision (THRU) delivered H1 results in line with the recent update. More broadly in the UK, we talk about Franchise Brands (FRAN) considering a move up to the LSE main market, Morgan Sindall (MGNS) doing well in the building sector and Mike Ashley moving on from Mulberry (MUL) to Boohoo (BOO). Next week for UK investors will be all about the Budget, although it’s also US jobs week with the “lottery” of non-farm payrolls on Friday which could provide someone with useful fuel to spray onto the US election fire…it should be an interesting week !

JUST RELEASED - new episode of Jeremy McKeown's In the Company of Mavericks: Navigating Emerging Markets with Leila Kardouche of Variis Partners LLP Partners Click here for the full episode, or to find links to it on your favourite podcast platforms: https://lnkd.in/ej7VE5Dg With recent signs that #EmergingMarkets might be re-emerging (https://lnkd.in/e3kdKqAP) Jeremy is joined by Emerging Markets expert, Leila Kardouche of Variis Partners, to discuss how investors might look at this space. They talk about the structure of EMs, the pros and cons of using benchmark indices such as the #MSCI and how to evaluate political risk in such a widely diverse range of markets. Variis' focus is on stock selection and Leila discusses how the challenges of growing businesses in emerging markets have produced some very successful compounding growth opportunities.

This week's Talking #Tech: The human in the loop Before taking us through his global tech-economy dashboards, George O'Connor discusses the recruitment sector. With the jobs market still wavering over the prospect of economic growth in these unsettled times and almost 40% of global employment reportedly exposed to AI, recruiters remain downbeat in their market prognosis, even as hiring intentions improve. George takes a deeper look and considers whether the Recruitment cohort might offer investors a strong valuation upside. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eNawHeAy Companies discussed include: UK - AOM ActiveOps, BYIT Bytes, HSW Hostelworld, HAS Hays, RWA Robert Walters and PAGE PageGroup Other - Infosys, HCL, LTIMindtree, Mastek, TCS and Wipro, Bechtle, Manpower #AI #GenAI

COMING SOON - Jeremy McKeown's In the Company of Mavericks: Navigating Emerging Markets with Leila Kardouche of Variis Partners With recent signs that Emerging Markets might be re-emerging (Read: https://lnkd.in/eiCbp6_r) Jeremy is joined by Emerging Markets expert, Leila Kardouche of Variis Partners LLP, to discuss how investors might look at this space. They talk about the structure of EMs, the pros and cons of using benchmark indices such as the MSCI, and how to evaluate political risk in such a widely diverse range of markets. Variis' focus is on stock selection and Leila discusses how the challenges of growing businesses in emerging markets have produced some very successful compounding growth opportunities. Listen to a clip. Tune back soon for the full episode: https://lnkd.in/dS5vfU7b #EmergingMarkets #MSCI

Read the latest HyperNormalTimes: Are Emerging Markets Re-emerging? The prospect for a changing world order in capital flows https://lnkd.in/eiCbp6_r After a decade or more of US dollar dominance and outperforming developed markets, the start of a Fed rate-cutting cycle in September threw a lifeline to emerging markets which had been largely forgotten after a decade of underperformance. China then announced an intention to loosen monetary and fiscal conditions in the world’s second-largest economy. With geopolitical tensions, fiscal challenges, economic growth imbalances, uncoordinated monetary loosening, and commodity and FX volatility still causing much market uncertainty as we enter Q4, Jeremy McKeown gives us his thoughts on the prospect for emerging markets to re-emerge and the possible opportunities there for investors who are prepared to do their research.

The Market Call: Week ending 18/10/24 - China risks deflation, the US risks reflation Listen or find links to this series on your favourite podcast platforms here: https://lnkd.in/eM5mkH5k This week Jeremy McKeown and Gareth Evans discuss events in Gaza and Israel, with oil prices lower as the risk of an attack on Iranian oil facilities has reduced, and the death of the Hamas leader could even open the fabled "path to peace". Meanwhile, even as energy prices dip, datacentre owners Google, Microsoft and Amazon are buying nuclear power capacity to avoid any risk of interruption to AI availability.    The UK has seen inflation fall to within the target range, with unemployment lower than expected....Sterling fell back against the dollar as interest rate expectations decline. Retail spending has been strong - as maybe the feelgood factor is returning. The Government's 10-year plan published today highlights almost every sector (except mining and oil & gas) as "growth". Meanwhile, the US government continues to pile on debt, and China is seeing house price declines which even a powerful "Beijing bazooka" might struggle to reverse.    The Progressive clients with news were Thruvision (THRU), Sanderson Design (SDG)  and Vertu Motors (VTU) ...all seeing tough conditions in different areas, and all trying to find and exploit the pockets of growth and stability.    Next week - there looks to be nothing of note! Last time we said that though, the Japanese market collapsed and the USD/Yen carry trade hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons...

Talking #Tech - Episode 10 🎧Listen to the full episode, or find links to it on your favourite podcast platforms here: https://lnkd.in/egQYPAt3 This week Ian Robertson sees some common themes with Pinewood (PINE) and Made Tech (MTEC) results – looking at sales processes, how much more difficult it is to sell software than services, and how lines can become blurred. George O'Connor looks to the results of TCS (Tata Consultancy Services), the services behemoth, and ponders an industry regaining its mojo before considering FD Technologies' (FDP) disposal and focusing on KX (AI again!). After a quick chat about the 'Rule of 40' data in Ian’s recent blog (https://lnkd.in/ep8hUTPa) George sums the tech sector up with a bit of poetry...

Question in a Bottle (The Desert Island Investor): What tips do you have to achieve early retirement? Listen in as private investor Mark Atkinson discusses old age and pensions and then gives us his top 5 tips for achieving early retirement: 🎧https://lnkd.in/eNAS8G-M Progressive are pleased to know that we can help investors with number 4! Our research and general content is free for all: https://lnkd.in/ejanys9y If you have a 'Question in a Bottle' for Mark, please submit it via the form which can be found on this link: https://lnkd.in/ehM9wd3p