Investment Week (September 5)
The bad news in the UK is that the majority of “firms (55%) are holding off on investment decisions until after the Autumn Budget—set for 26th November.” The good news is that 43% of those businesses “are expecting to increase investment as a result.” The Barclays’ Business Prosperity index expects investment “to grow by 5.5% over the next 12 months, with 89% of businesses remaining confident in their own prosperity.”
Tags: Autumn Budget, Barclays, Business Prosperity index, Businesses, Confident, Firms, Grow, Holding off, Increase, Investment decisions, Prosperity, UK
Barron’s (December 10)
As it attempts to address inflation without derailing the recovery (or worse), the Fed will be walking a tight rope. On the upside, “the banking system is now both better capitalized and less exposed to illiquidity risk than in the past.” Moreover, “both households and firms are in better shape to weather higher interest costs now than they were in 1981 or, indeed, other episodes of monetary tightening.”
Tags: Banking system, Capitalized, Derailing, Exposed, Fed, Firms, Households, Illiquidity, Inflation, Interest costs, Recovery, Risk
Wall Street Journal (February 17)
“Continental governments have spent trillions during the pandemic keeping firms alive and people in jobs, but that safety net could be putting off the economic deep cleaning that normally comes with recessions.” Concern is growing that “mothballing the economy for so long will leave it struggling to adapt to the seismic business and social changes the crisis is driving. That could stall an economic recovery.”
Tags: Adapt, Crisis, Economic deep cleaning, Firms, Governments, Jobs, Mothballing, Pandemic, Recessions, Recovery, Safety net, Struggling
Guardian (February 10)
“Across the UK, firms and consumers are discovering costs of Brexit that Mr Johnson denied. That denial was born of a failure to understand the trade-off between regulatory autonomy and market access. The prime minister swapped seamless trade for notional sovereignty and passed the cost on to unsuspecting businesses. Naturally, he wants to blame the EU for any pain. These are not teething troubles in implementation of the deal. They are the deal.”
Tags: Blame, Brexit, Consumers, Costs, Denial, EU, Failure, Firms, Johnson, Market access, Regulatory autonomy, Seamless trade, Sovereignty, Trade-off, UK
The Economist (September 19)
“The new age of nationalism will change the way multinational firms are run—for the worse.” The “Corporate contortions” now underway “at TikTok and Arm are an unfortunate sign of things to come.” We are witnessing the birth “Frankenfirms.”
Tags: Arm, Contortions, Firms, Frankenfirms, Multinational, Nationalism, TikTok, Unfortunate, Worse
Institutional Investor (May 30)
Firms “are doubling down on machine learning and other quantitative investing efforts.” More advanced than rule-based algorithms, “with machine learning, a computer sifts through billions of data points, picking up patterns. Armed with this knowledge, it learns trading behaviors such as buying dips or selling high over time, based on what it has gleaned about the market from past and present data.” Despite the inroads, however, human ingenuity remains essential.
Tags: Algorithms, Computer, Data points, Dip, Firms, Ingenuity, Investing, Machine learning, Market, Patterns, Quantitative, Trading
The Economist (March 8)
“Western firms have piled into emerging markets in the past 20 years. Now comes the reckoning.” The Fed’s quantitative easing, an over-exuberant investment cycle, rising local currency prices for commodities, and other factors are undermining the emerging market paradigm. “Plenty of firms and some whole industries need a rethink. The emerging-market rush may end up like a giant version of the first internet boom 15 years ago. The broad thrust was right but some big mistakes were made.”
Tags: Commodities, Currency prices, Emerging markets, Fed, Firms, Industries, Internet boom, Investment, Over-exuberant, Quantitative easing, Rethink
