Courteney Morrison

My daughter is half English and half Scottish so she gets to support Scotland in Rugby and England in Football. At the tender age of 2 years she has already experienced enough disappointment for the former so hopefully England can get the win tonight and give her some joy! I’ll keep it brief today given that the vast majority of readers will be heading out and getting prepared for the game and broadly speaking nothing much has happened. European Equities still struggling from low volume and bro…

We’re not normally blessed with an abundance of Liquidity in European and UK Equities at the best of times but as things start to deteriorate it seems front and centre of peoples minds as we kick of the summer and are just a number of days away from Q2 numbers starting to come in thick and fast. Some painful moves today, broadly down the liquidity spectrum but wide ranging – Indivior -35%, CompuGroup -32%, Veralia -17%, Pagegroup -6% and Dassault Systemes -5% the headlines today but it felt cle…

A first for me having managed to navigate the heat in Italy (not meaning to rub it in too much) without any instances of Sunburn whatsoever. Maybe I’ve finally matured, realised my Scottish heritage or took suitable advantage of my daughters factor 50 spray but I thought it was an achievement nonetheless. Not a huge amount achieved in European equities last week with holiday interruptions, elections and things broadly as I left them (aside from Political change in the UK and France) as U.S. equ…

As we approach the end of the Month/Quarter/Half end and moves/flows start to be dictated by that I thought the Snapshot could take on a slightly different tone, having a look back at the first half and a few looks forward to what may come. Oh and the Stoxx 600 closed a little lower weighed by France…again!

“It’s the journey that matters not the result” a friend said to me yesterday and post Friday’s humbling result that’s the sort of mindset I’ll have heading to Cologne tomorrow for the Scotland vs Switzerland match. It’s a bit like entering the Euromillions (£146m tonight fyi) – you’re probably not going to win, but that doesn’t stop you thinking you might in the lead up – Optimism is a beautiful thing. No signs of optimism fading within the Equity complex, yes we’re now lagging the U.S. quite c…

Today felt like just what the doctor ordered for European equities. Macron out with a reassuring statement early doors that he won’t quit if his party loses the upcoming parliamentary elections which settled a few nerves. It was followed by soft set of U.S. data pretty much across the board – Headline CPI at 3.3%, Core at 3.4% both YoY but the monthly trend improving and coming in at 0.2% ex-food and energy but all markets positive. Key is that the U.S.10yr dropped below the key 4.33% level and…

Ahead of the CPI and a Fed Decision tomorrow in the U.S. there is usually a certain natural vacuum within the Equity markets. Usually we flicker about within a few bps of the previous close as we all wait fairly patiently and wait, and wait. Today, following on from yesterday, feel like a great example of when one negative news story is out there on those kinds of days and it tends to carry a bit more weight and the Stoxx 600 ended the day -90bps. A story rumbling about Macron possibly resignin…

Four days touring around the south of England in (mostly sunshine) certainly a lovely break though I was blown away by the sheer amount of Lib Dem pickets on driveways I saw on my travels. A 250-1 shot for an overall majority in the election in a few weeks’ time meaning if you put 10 pounds on them, you lose 10 pounds. Second favourite however to be in a coalition with Labour as the shape of the next government and wherever you look right now politics is shifting and it all feels a very fluid s…

Part of my rehabilitation is to attach an electric ‘TENS’ machine to spark some life into my somewhat dormant leg muscles that haven’t had much to do in… well…quite a long time. Today was a day when it seemed the TENS machine was attached to the European Equity market and sparking some much needed life. There was an 80bp rally for the Stoxx 600 though in a little change to what we’ve seen recently it was the large heavyweights doing the lifting. The Euro Stoxx 50 (+1.6%) which had its best day…

Everything is relative in this industry and we are still fairly close to recent highs but there was little doubt that at times today felt on the painful side. Oil breaking below not one, but two supports in the last few sessions and an OPEC meeting that didn’t soothe investor’s fears set the tone for a day when Energy names in Europe came under pressure from the outset: BP a 12mo relative low, TotalEnergies right at a big level just a couple but there was nowhere to hide with the sector (SXEP)…