The urgent need for investment in water infrastructure has become a national political issue in the UK, driven by both media and grassroots organisations frustrated by poor water quality in lakes, rivers, and beaches. The UK’s water industry has a unique ownership structure, having been completely privatised in the 1980s and now including a mix […]
The increase in electricity demand due to artificial intelligence and data centers has been widely discussed over the last few months. But it’s not just data centers that are driving load growth. Most decarbonisation stories are also linked to electrification. This demand growth presents several investment opportunities, especially across utilities, mining, and industrials. The majority […]
Gold. The investor’s best friend in helping to preserve value over centuries. And now potentially on the cusp of major bull market. Gold preserves its value due to its elemental scarcity. Rarity at an elemental level protects it against human ingenuity trying to undercut its value. Diamonds lack the same benefit as at a chemical […]
In 1923, a then-little-known economist, John Maynard Keynes, was analysing the commodity futures markets when he stumbled on a peculiar feature of futures pricing. He noticed that the costs of commodity storage, which are often very high, were baked into the contracts’ pricing. He observed that speculators invested in commodity futures would not only receive […]
In recent years, many investors have focused on a restricted subset of the investment universe. Acronyms such as FAANG and MAMAA and more recent references to the Magnificent 7 and Sensational 6 have taken headlines and monopolised investors’ attention. This has some merit as we have seen these names substantially outperform smaller peers. However, investing […]
The weakness of the Japanese Yen (JPY) is becoming disorderly to the extent that it is starting to worry the Ministry of Finance (MOF), prompting it not only to ask the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to intervene directly in the currency market but also putting pressure on the Central Bank to expedite and increase the […]
Cocoa, an often-forgotten commodity, has been at the forefront of financial news lately, for perhaps all the wrong reasons. Cocoa’s price has risen 4x since a year ago, and while strong, multi-year rallies in commodities are quite common, the speed and strength of Cocoa’s moves is something else, putting crypto, gold and even the magnificent […]
Mexico is back in the spotlight for global macro investors, with an election in June, closely followed by the US election not long after. The country is poised to benefit from deglobalisation as the US seeks to untangle complicated supply chains and reduce reliance on China. Interest rates may have reached a critical turning point […]
“Volmageddon” entered the financial lexicon in February 2018, a word that blends destructive connotations of Armageddon with the explosive dynamics of market volatility. A fitting new word, if ever there was one, to describe a one-day event that had no forewarning and no trigger, yet in a few hours, destroyed a whole substratum of investors […]
Dragons are important in China, being the only mythical creature that has found a place in the Chinese zodiac. In Chinese folklore, the years of the Dragon (2024 and every preceding 12 years) are associated with good fortune and success. In contrast, the years of the Tiger (2022) and Rabbit (2023) were not particularly good […]