TURN & FACE THE STRANGE..CH CH CHANGES
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change” (Professor Stephen Hawking)
So November has been and gone and Donald J Trump has gone and got himself the job. As you know with my previous blogs, predicting what will happen in the future is a futile exercise. A GBP5 wager on a treble 18 months ago which had Leicester City being Premiership Champions, Britain voting to leave the EU and Donald being President Elect would have netted you GBP12.5 million!
So how did that news reflect on the markets:
Dow Jones +5.4%
Nasdaq +2.6%
FTSE -2.0%
Nikkei +5.0%
Shanghai +4.2%
Dax -0.1%
And the USD against….
GBP -1.7%
EUR +3.5%
JPY +9.8%
CNY +1.6%
AUD +3.6%
So the US appears to have been receptive to the “Trumpenomics” which have been promised. Pre election, the markets seem to stutter every time an interest rate rise was mentioned. Now the December rate rise seems nailed on yet the markets are going merrily on their way towards their usual positive final quarter.
The USD remains strong with gains against all currencies with the exception of the GBP which has simply been exploited by traders to put it where it is and should continue its steady comeback. Japan has got what it wanted, weaker JPY, bringing its market down just 2.7% YTD from what seemed like a potentially disastrous year ahead back in February and whilst the FTSE gave some gains back, it is still up over 8% for the year.
So all in all things are looking positive and we can expect a strong finish to a year in which we have seen some changes with many of the Western democracies “going against the grain” and voting for change.
So when we reflect, 2016 will be quite a year to remember….and a positive one for the markets…
