Courteney Morrison

Whilst all eyes are on the Fed and the dot plots tonight I’ll be keeping one eye on the football. Who doesn’t love an underdog story? San Marino have won just one of their 206 international football matches with the one win coming in 2004 vs Lichtenstein but one of the longest streaks may be close to ending as they play St Kitts & Nevis this evening. Aside from this obviously there will be the dot plots to assess – In December these suggested three 25bp rate cuts by the end of this year. We do…

Having got back from 3 weeks abroad and tentatively stepped onto the scales I quickly decided it was probably time to lose some of that Christmas weight!! Easier said than done as everyone knows and temptation is absolutely everywhere in this office – Krispy Kreme’s yesterday, Ole & Steen Cinamon Social today being paraded through the room. It appears one of the few problems with becoming a bigger firm is that there is a birthday nearly every day! Ben and Jerry’s and Magnum’s were talk of the o…

I announced the start of Spring this morning and was quickly corrected that that isn’t until the early hours of Wednesday morning but there is something about the light in the morning that just energises one’s self. Equity markets didn’t quite get the memo with developed indices broadly trading within a few bps of where they closed Friday. Central Banks spring into action overnight with the BoJ kicking off a bumper few days where the commentary is likely more up in the air than the decisions th…

A Friday feel to Thursday today but possibly in anticipation of a Thursday feel to Friday’s tape tomorrow. Quarterly options expiries and index reweights providing a liquidity event ahead of a jam packed macro week next week. There was a bit to keep on top off as we headed in the afternoon and it finally felt like both Yields and Equities couldn’t continue to climb in tandem. Yields had a sizeable move post a hotter than expected PPI – U.S PPI was stronger than expected up from 1.0% in January…

There is just nowhere else to start today than the red headline that flashed through early this morning – “Euro Stoxx 50 hits 5,000 points for first time in 24 years’. I may be revealing a bit too much but the last time it was here I was probably somewhere collecting Pokémon cards. In Europe we’ve been hearing (and if honest getting a lit bit bored/envious) of all the chatter re how well the Mag 7, Nasdaq and S&P 500 have done but a quick look at the YTD index performance will show the Euro Sto…

It’s been a while since I have done one of these so please forgive any tardiness on my behalf. A few weeks away from the screens always tends to sooth the soul and give a fresh perspective and I’ve been impressed with what Equities have managed to do. We approach a big expiry on Friday which could open the door to some more volatile moves next week especially with a number of Central Banks updating us (BoJ, Fed, BOE) 3 days on the trot but for now we are grinding higher, with the odd pull back…

Two days in these markets is a long time and it feels a lot longer ago than Tuesday that investors were looking at an Equity market in a bit of a fall and judging whether inflation was on the rise. Yields were rallying, cyclicals getting smacked and today we recovered all of the losses suffered from that day and more as we rallied back with the Stoxx 600, Euro Stoxx, Euro Stoxx 50, CAC, DAX, FTSE MIB and KFX all making 12mo highs at some stage today in the process. Things felt quite squeezy fro…

“One bad day doesn’t make a trend” chimed Ben Denney as we picked up the pieces from yesterday’s fairly lively session but the overall theme for this week remains in Europe – low volumes. It’s very hard to judge what the true market reaction to the various moving parts this week would have been when volumes in Europe have dropped significantly from last week and the rest of the year. Yesterday’s c90% down day in the U.S. was followed by a c75% up day so clearly there is still a lot of chopping…

Shove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday or Pancake day – whatever you call it…. it’s today. A healthy debate on the desk on the topic of Sweet or Savoury though I was very much shot down with my Savoury call. I’ll always leave enough batter for a little lemon & sugar/Nutella chaser and that takes a bit of nous but it has to be ham and cheese crepes for dinner. Flipping a real skill and there is every chance mine ends up flat on the floor. Europe has been flipping between gains on losses on an al…

It was a case of close but no cigar for the Scottish and Welsh rugby union teams this weekend and for the San Francisco 49ers who came so close to the Super Bowl last night. The ‘Swift-Effect’ likely brought the Super Bowl to more living rooms than ever before and the tense nature of an overtime win maybe just what the NFL wanted. A few tired people to start the day, mixed with an array of regional holidays for China, Korea and Japan amongst others, a lack of reporting names on a Monday (which…