It’s that time of the year where I look at my pension holdings and decide where to place my bets. For the last couple of years the focus of my investments have been in global equity funds and they have done rather well. But with the big gains in 2013 (23%) , I moved everything into money market funds late in 2013, so missed out on the Santa Rally, though I avoided some of the emerging markets sell off.  [read more →]

The words too big to fail might have been coined during the various bail out’s of the 2008/2009 financial crisis, but little seems to have changed in the last 5 years. Data provider SNL Financial found that the five largest banks in the United States own 44% of the industry’s total assets.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke leaves his post shortly to be replaced by Janet Yellen. His speech yesterday ay the AEA in Philadelphia is going to be one of his last…

On Thursday Twitter shares were up about 100% since late November, having closed at $73.31. This compares with the $26 IPO price and the opening price at its listing on the NYSE of $45 on November 7th 2013. Finally Twitter shares did drop yesterday but…

The Fed released their latest financial snapshot on Boxing Day and it contained fascinating facts. No wonder they decided to start tapering at their last FOMC meeting from $85 to $75 billion a month in terms of their asset purchase programme.

U.S. stocks ended at all time highs pre-Christmas after a strong durable-goods orders report with the Dow at 16,358 and the S&P 500 at 1,833. Yet the market bull run shows no obvious signs of slowing down right now. All the worries about Euro Zone debt, Federal Bank money printing, low growth have all disappeared.

The early finish to the Fed’s quantitative easing programme was interpreted by the markets as showing greater confidence in the potential strength of the U.S. economy next year.

About 5 years ago the Fed launched an unprecedented shopping spree, commonly known as quantitative easing, in plain English a wild attempt to buy $1.25 trillion in mortgage bonds in 12 months with main purpose to affect credit conditions for households and businesses.

Since we last spoke, the eurozone has come out of recession following six successive quarters of contraction. These days growth of just 0.3pc is cause for optimism given what the world has been through over the past five or so years.