Month: November 2021
Market Update: New COVID Variant Flattens ‘Black Friday’ Feeling
It’s been a Thanksgiving week of mixed news. The European COVID case surge was surpassed in negative impact by the fears of a new variant emanating from South Africa. US markets hit new highs just before the holiday, but Black Friday has felt a bit dark. In itself, a new variant is not surprising. New variants are always a risk, but each of the past ones has been dealt with by the vaccines.
Change to The State Pension Triple Lock
The earnings benchmark of the State Pension triple lock will be temporarily set aside for next year. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) confirmed on 7 September that the State Pension triple lock rule will not be applied for the 2022/23 financial year over concerns of the potential costs involved.
Market Update: Dollar strength and divergence caps a dull week for investors
Despite the negative news flow, be it COVID or politics, UK consumers are proving their resilience once again with both October retail demand and domestic consumer sentiment pointing up. Perhaps the buoyant jobs market is encouraging the UK public to be less concerned about inflationary pressures eating into their disposable incomes than some economists would expect, or it is equally possible that higher energy and food prices have not quite hit home yet.
ESG: Investing With Impact
It’s no secret that the growth of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investments in recent years has been fundamental. This has largely been fuelled by the climate emergency, leading to growing scrutiny of company practices with some governments mandating a change in companies’ and individuals’ behaviour...
Market Update: The bad kind of inflation…
We are in the middle of the biggest inflation bout in years as ubiquitous post lockdown supply issues are sending prices skyward. A recent report from the Bank of International Settlements suggests that this inflation has become self-reinforcing; Bottlenecks have caused suppliers to build buffers at multiple stages of the chain, exacerbating supply problems that drive prices...
Time for pensions to contribute towards building a better world
As we have been witnessing in recent years and months, climate changes are occurring in every region and globally. A new landmark report from the United Nations on the state of climate science has highlighted modern society’s continued dependence on fossil fuels, which is warming the world at a pace that is unprecedented in the past 2,000 years...