Daily Snapshot

During university, I was quoted €4,500 for my first ever car insurance policy. An extortionate figure which was quite a bitter pill to swallow at the time but had I read the following article, then maybe this would have been a different story. Supposedly car insurance quotes fluctuate depending on the time of purchase, with the cost of certain policies more than doubling after midnight, as underwriters offer higher prices during the hours when fraud is more common alongside the view that people…

What can you gift a man who has it all? I’m not sure if my father would agree with the latter part of that question, but I did laugh at his seemingly humble response over the weekend when he said that all he wants for Christmas this year is a set of Slippers and nothing else. When the bar is set that low, you would think that this should be an easy win, but I do not trust this nonchalant approach for a split second and the risk of disappointment remains high given that he is hands-down the tri…

Running out of things to say this week so just as well I’m off to Edinburgh tomorrow afternoon for the Scottish Investment Charity Dinner (Aka the Smoker)! With that in mind I’ll keep it short today. The one theme today that was evident everywhere you looked was that winners are continuing to do just that: The best sectors YTD in Europe (Retail, Tech and Industrials) were all amongst the leaders today. Notable gainers in the single stock space included SAP, Inditex, Schneider, Rheinmetall, Zeal…

Looked up the French word for resilience this morning was disappointed to find it was résilience. From the Latin verb resilire, meaning to rebound and not (until recently) a word used when describing the Scottish rugby team’s performances. A number of indices in Europe were making new highs today including the FTSE All Share total return and the DAX, whilst the FTSE 100 was approaching a big resistance at 8400. The Euro Stoxx 50 ended the day up 66bps for its first 4-day win streak since August…

We’re in December now (Santa rally pending? Well that really is the period between Christmas and New Year) so it was finally time to put up the Christmas Tree (how expensive are these now?!) and various other decorations alongside a customary mince pie and glass of Bailey’s. Drama arose in an effort to unblock a gold glitter glue pen (bear with me) when I finally managed to do so it was at the expense of my left eye as it fired gold glue into it much to the enjoyment of my daughter. Even though…

Apart from the Snapshot (I hear you say) is there a worse email to receive than the Lottery’s “Courteney, you’ve won a prize!” email only to find out you’re not the UK winner of €173m but in fact the winner of 10p (and actually its more like an overall loss of £7.40 in total but who’s counting). Another fairly quiet day as we limp towards the Thanksgiving holiday, Equities in Europe are still happier to drift with the Stoxx 600 ending the day -20bps but no real damage done and not a huge amount…

I’m off to Christmas Lights at Kew right now this evening which I’m told is very good even if it still feels a little early to be getting in the Christmas spirit. No real bright sparks in Europe remains the case – in fact since the middle of March the Stoxx 600 hasn’t actually moved at all and we’ve always been within a pretty tight 10% range. Not exactly the most exciting backdrop whilst the S&P 500 has rallied 16% and is still showing renewed signs of climbing with new closing all-time highs…

“How are things in the UK right now?” Well….the budget has caused a significant amount of discontent and the petition “I would like there to be another General Election” has gathered 2,271,394 signatures in a pretty short space of time less than 6 months into the ‘new’ labour government. It’s unlikely to move the dial despite how embarrassing it might seem and as Starmer said today it’s not unusual for a government to be unpopular, but the speed in which is kept on going up was quite impressive…

I said we were now on the countdown to Christmas and I had my first Mince Pie of the year today (M&S and only bite size) though nothing really to celebrate apart from maybe the fact that snow hit London. A few European investors probably wanting to close their Mince Pies (eyes for those not acquainted with Cockney rhyming slang) as the Stoxx 600 hit a 3mo low (intraday) on a day when things felt particularly shaky at times though managed to bounce a little late in the day. Though the Ukraine c…

I attended the Kings Road Christmas light turn on at the weekend which really was quite lovely (well apart from coinciding with the England vs South Africa Rugby match). Amongst the mulled wine, Children’s Choirs and Christmas carols it provided a clear and obvious reminder that we’re fast approaching Christmas! The European Equity complex today very much feels in the thick of quite a bleak mid-winter as volumes saw a significant drop with a lack of catalysts and a few things on the horizon lik…