Macro News

Mike Riddell, manager of the M&G Global Macro Bond fund, believes the US dollar looks cheap on almost all measures, while emerging market currencies still face significant risks.

The European funds industry amassed net inflows of 3.5bn for August, with Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom taking the lion's share of assets, according to the latest research from Lipper.

Kentaro Sasaki, head of Japan equity research and lead manager of JPM Japan Select Equity fund, says that while Japanese markets have priced in the impact of a depreciating yen, the impact of higher inflation as a result of the economic reforms enacted by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is not yet reflected in share prices.

Economists believe that falling manufacturing output and industrial production makes an imminent rise in interest rates increasingly unlikely.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s planned tax increase for April 2014 could cause a minor bump in the country’s road to recovery, but the decision has removed any uncertainty overshadowing markets, according to regional experts.

Fitch Ratings has cut its growth forecasts for all four BRIC economies but said emerging markets would continue to outperform the developed world for at least the next two years.

The Federal Reserve’s about turn on its plans to taper quantitative easing disappointed market commentators and cast further doubt over trust levels in the authority.

The consumer price index measure of inflation in the UK dipped to 2.7% in August from 2.8% a month earlier, sparking a variety of predictions on whether it will continue to trend towards its 2% target.

Vincent Devlin, fund manager on the BlackRock Greater Europe Trust, says that while there are tentative signs of a pick-up in Eurozone economic momentum, credit conditions are still poor and the financial transmission mechanism still stressed.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has revised its UK growth rate to 1.3% for the year, up from an earlier estimate of 0.9%, praising the consistent confidence of businesses in the face of “unwarranted pessimism over the economy”.