Let’s celebrate
Great Britain team brought home 67 medals from Rio Olympics
beating the record of 65 medals from London Olympics in 2012. This put team GB second in the Rio medal
table after USA and above China. This is
an amazing achievement considering Great Britain population of 65 million
versus China 1.3 billion and the effort that the Chinese put into
Olympics. Another amusing result is
women’s volleyball. The Chinese ladies won
5 out of 8 games and got gold medals.
The Serbia team won 6 out of 8 games and got silver. The US team won 7 out of 8 games and got
bronze. It is about which battle to win
not how many battles you win.
Similarly in investment, it is more important to be
right on one big win than on many small bets.
Brexit could be the best entry point to the stock market this year. Now, the stock market in US and Europe are
looking toppish. UK political scenery is
clear and Brexit work has started. Market
refocuses on EU monetary policy which means expecting the Central Bank to
continue pumping money to the system.
Bank deposit and high grade bonds are giving investors zero to negative
return. Sitting on cash is not a
sustainable option for money managers.
Investing in stocks is the lesser of two evils and this could be a
driver for potential further upside in the stock market. Another piece of good news to the stock
market is the Brent crude oil price is getting back to USD 50 a barrel. This gives oil producing countries like
Russia and Saudi Arabia some breathing space on their budget and shines some
light to the oil and gas companies.
Money managers who switch out of bond investment into equity could be buying
index funds and probably index ETFs (Exchange Listed Funds) with good daily
trading volume. There are ETFs on
Eurostoxx 50, German DAX, French CAC, FTSE 100, US S&P500, Nasdaq, Japan
N225 and China A50 with great trading volume and low management fee. The good daily trading volume is important
for money managers so they could get in and out of the ETFs easily. If they feel like getting out of the ETFs and
get back to the bonds, it is just a matter of pressing a few keys.
London Underground going for 24 hours service is an
interesting topic and it comes with 24 hours restaurants, bars, gyms, etc. The economy taking a vampire shift could
indeed boost jobs, cut pollutions because of less driving and lift London
property prices in general. It also
helps London securing its position as the currency trading place in European
time zone. Currency trading is round the
clock and highly electronic. So London
traders sitting in their office can indeed trade in US and Asia timezone with
clients all over the world. Same applies
to Spread Betting and CFD (Contract for Difference) business that offers margin
trading on stocks, currency, precious metals (eg Gold) and commodities (oil,
copper, etc). The next question is where
to find the labor force to man the sleepy hours. Everyone knows the answer is the hard working
talents from the EU community. This is
going to make Boris’ job interesting.
Donald Trump has similar hair to Boris and his
falling popularity surprisingly has nothing to do with his hair style. The audience seems to getting bored of Donald’s
“you are fired” Apprentice infotainment marketing approach. Even within the Republicans are feeling
divided. On the other hand, Hilary
Clinton has got a lot more united support from Democrats as a whole, at least
from the surface. Hilary is gaining
while Donald is losing steam as we could see from the poll. Hilary is too experience to make silly
mistake to let Donald come back with a knocked out punch. Obama started his Presidency with the Global
Financial Crisis and his two terms turned out to be a great bull run in stock
market. Too early to say if the bull run
in US stock market could continue if Hilary moves into the White House (as
President this time). However, Donald
will certainly give the world a lot of surprises and more volatility to the
stock market. Maybe Donald is good news
for the construction and building materials companies because of the great wall
along the border to Mexico. One common
theme between the 2 candidates is that National Security budget is likely to
increase and security and surveillance related companies should deserve
investors’ attention.
