Daily Snapshot

Having spoken about inflation for the best part of 12months the word that dominated this morning was deflation. Sadly not in the way many would hope with markets eagerly awaiting continued signs of a fall in inflation to aid the calls for a soft landing but thanks to the Chinese spy balloon which was swiftly deflated by the U.S. Airforce over the weekend in quite spectacular style it must be said. Not a huge amount to worry about here we don’t think but it does once again bring the Chinese/U.S. relationship into question again, with Blinken not travelling to China anymore and officials saying that a trip for him is up to China to announce.

Coffee at the ready this morning to deal with the busiest earnings day, the follow on from the Fed meeting and bracing for the BoE and ECB to update the market. Hopefully you managed to avoid Starbucks and find a Costa though as it was reported this week that a Medium Cappuccino has 5x the amount of caffeine than the equivalent at Starbucks  – talk about short changed!

You’ve heard of the difficulties of finding a needle in a haystack but have you heard of trouble in finding a 6mm by 8mm Radioactive capsule along a 1400km stretch of Western Australia? Now I’ve not got any special ‘finding’ skills but if those were the options given to me I’d certainly be asking them to pile up the haystacks! Earnings season can be quite like that and there was a definite sense of ‘there’s just too much out’ this morning and finding the real important movers certainly a tricky challenge and one that is only going to get harder as we continue this week.

So another Monday spent looking forward rather than at the current situation but all feel very intertwined as a little bit of fear creeps in and Equity markets slide. The Stoxx 600 closed down 20bps but felt heavier for much of the day before some late optimism on a quiet day for European Equities. Certainly a few nerves out looking to the blockbuster 24 hours from Wednesday evening and it felt like a worthwhile task catching up with our Economist ahead of the event.

Does anyone actually enjoy earnings season? I’m guessing the answer is no, so much noise, so many names (and always on a Thursday) so I came up with a new idea – there should be 5-10 a day, every day for the whole year and the worst performing company the year before gets to pick their days first. Friday’s in August are hot property, so are Bank holidays but the top pick is usually that dead week between Christmas and New Year. They are tradable too, so you can pay to swap days with another company if you’re keen or less keen to update the market on how you’re doing.

A bit of Tam o’ Shanter, To a Mouse and of course the Address to a Haggis is on the cards tonight and for those that do not know what I am talking about – shame on you. It is of course Burns night and although you’d rather not know goes in a haggis it is delicious. My Dry January is still going strong and I have yet to see a non-alcoholic whisky and I expect that is for good reason.

Today was a day that I was very tempted to try out this ChatGPT malarky and see what the fuss was about. ‘Please write a little anecdote followed by a summary of what happened in European Equity markets’. Given how dull today was I think even it may have struggled but I was put off the idea by a 22 year old university student in the U.S., Edward Tian who has fought back against the software that has become so popular in recent weeks by creating his own app GPTzero which uses ChatGPT against itself to identify whether AI has been involved in creating text and singles out the fraudsters.

Does a juice diet still count if you polish off a bag of Walkers Salt & Vinegar crisps when no one is looking? Asking for a friend, because I’m obviously sticking to this strict diet but there were moments today when it felt like I was running out of energy and the market reflected this too. The Stoxx 600 opened lower and drifted throughout the day to close down -1.55%, the worst day of the year thus far. There wasn’t really anything new out today that caused this move lower, instead it felt like (for the first time in a while it must be said) we looked to the U.S. for guidance, and followed their move after we left.

After what could be called a slightly indulgent few days filled with steaks whilst trying to be on some sort of health kick I’ve decided to bite the bullet and do the juice diet for a couple of days. Watch out, by tomorrow’s Snapshot there is a high chance it has various grumpy tones throughout as I do suffer the occasional ‘hangry’ bout. But there isn’t much to be grumpy about is there? The Stoxx 600 closed up 24bps and Europe has been down just twice now in the first 13 sessions of the year. 8 of those up days have yielded less than a 1% gain but little by little we are nudging higher and there was a slight sense today that nothing could de-rail this market, which probably means something will try to.

Obviously having used the comparison between Flat Iron and Hawksmoor I had to do the right thing and test out the latter with a client who just so happened to attend our Midcap conference today and the early feedback was some healthy discussions as we would expect and some relief in the private space that some of the high multiple funding rounds were over and some sense is now back in the market. Luckily I was back at my desk just in time to see the main catalyst of the day – news that ECB officials are pondering a 25bp hike as soon as March which caught plenty off-guard and helped the Stoxx 600 gain 40bps on the day.