Markets Happy Hour Podcast with Aoifinn Devitt

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we pledge to go jargon free - after I was caught out using the jargon "K shaped recovery" on BBC business news on Wednesday morning. Lesson learned! This week, which comes to you from Amsterdam (with some bad conference room lighting) we discuss the heightened inflation expectations, which are still paired with strong spending - creating a bit of a disconnect. We ask about whether that suggests the classic "K shaped recovery" is unraveling - that the lower end consumer is getting some "legs" and starting to spend more. We are unconvinced of that - given the fact that food prices remain high across the board - and could "poison" the well of future inflation. Energy too remains at high levels, so can interest rates possibly not follow inflation upwards?Digging into equity markets, earnings are growing in the S&P at 27%, undoubtedly powered by AI and we ask about how in fact these margins can possibly be expanding with rising costs and a more discerning consumer. We wonder if this is short term - have the costs been artificially suppressed and has the consumer pulled expenditure forward? The start of the AI cycle really killed the trajectories of both value stocks and small cap stocks, and there has been no repeat of the rotation and mean reversion that has typically presented in these cases. A sector that has languished in equity markets and is acutely exposed to interest rates is real estate, and from residential housing bearing the weight of 7% mortgages to commercial property caught off-guard by rising rates, there seems to be few places to hide in real estate investing today - except, perhaps, in SF houses or data centers. For investment portfolios public equities remain the buoyancy that has kept the portfolios afloat as rising bond yields have eroded fixed income return and real estate remains stagnant. While we have heard some anecdotal evidence of private equity returns and distributions slowly, behind the scenes, improving, any portfolio that is underweight public equities will lag its benchmark. Whether this matters is another question - most investors target steady state absolute returns, but it does remain to be seen if shifts will take place in these targets as equities dominate the headlines and steal an increasing share of the pie.

Welcome to the first Markets Happy Hour webinar. Host Aoifinn Devitt welcomes Will Stephenson, co-founder of Fiber Pay, to discuss why currency planning is one of the most overlooked pieces of global wealth management.In this conversation, Aoifinn and Will cover:"Currency architecture" — mapping your income, spending, and investments across the currencies tied to where you live, work, and investHow to time and execute large currency transfers, including real estate purchases abroadStrategies for managing currency risk during the gap between signing and closing on propertyWhy FX forecasts are harder to rely on than ever — and what that means for planningHow inflation and interest rate trends compare across the US, UK, Europe, and emerging marketsThe US dollar's role as a safe haven and what's driving demand to convert dollars into other currencies right nowWhy clients should plan early rather than scrambling at the last minuteWhether you're buying property abroad, funding a child's education overseas, or simply holding wealth in more than one currency, this episode offers a practical look at the planning questions that matter most.🔔 Subscribe for more from the Markets Happy Hour series.#CurrencyExchange #WealthManagement #ForeignExchange #InternationalRealEstate #MarketsHappyHour #Moneta

This week’s Markets Happy Hour podcast comes to you from a secret garden in New York City, as I wrap up a full day of interviews and two media appearances – Bloomberg and Fox News. It is therefore quite abbreviated this week, as we get ready for our Live Markets Happy Hour Webinar with a special feature on currency architecture next week.This week we talk about the “Economy that Never Sleeps” from the “City that Never Sleeps. The inflation pressure from energy seems to be confusing the read that the Fed is trying to take from inflation, and as the ripple effect of last week’s interest rate hike are felt through markets, the reaction remains subdued – until now. It remains to be seen whether mortgage rates at 7% proves to be a critical milestone in terms of its deterrent effect on homebuilding, home sales and general consumer wellbeing Markets continue to narrow and the market cap weighted indices are diverging from equal weighted again. Tech earnings remain strong, but non-tech earnings are also cutting in a very decent showing. Meanwhile geopolitics are continuing to be unpredictable but not in a ways that are unsettling markets while AI battle lines continue to be drawn.

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we were delighted to be joined by Helen Thomas, founder of BlondeMoney (in 2016) to bring together the worlds of political and financial risk. She is deeply versed in UK and global politics. We start with the big news of the week - which, despite the title of the podcast being D-Day for Doomers, is now yesterday’s rate hike by the Fed.While small (25 bps) the hike felt momentous because of the shift of the direction, the reality that inflation is not falling and the fact that the new Chair Kevin Warsh clearly went against the direction of travel that President Trump would have wanted. This shores up the Fed’s independence as an institution. On the other hand it is actually not that significant at all if we look back to the history of bond yields. Helen turns her gaze on the political landscape across Europe and how it is evolving, sharing insights on the forces that have driven some of the current fractures. We speak about what the EU Commission President has said we need to do in terms of “urgently reimagining” our partnerships, and the recent overtures by Canada to become a member of the EU is just one example of how the Middle Powers may start to forge their own – alternative – path

In this week’s Markets Happy Hour Podcast we are joined by HSBC Asset Management Global Investment Strategist and “market storyteller” Joe Little. A legendary force on Linked IN, we were delighted to feature his insights here for 30 minutes. We start with picking apart the prevailing narratives and counternarratives that continue to course through markets driven on the one hand by last week’s positive employment number in the US and ask whether these stats can be relied upon as much as ever. Narratives differ of course, with the rise of populist politics in the Germany framed as a reaction to a perceived “dark place”. We ask whether the resilience in markets – whether to the oil price, geopolitics or tariff newschatter – is due to a fundamental lower reliance on these things – a diversification of causal factors or a combination of an outsized The bond market has been getting a lot of attention as a “showdown” seems to be ongoing between Scott Bessent who has suggested that he “is the house” and can persist with the current bond market intervention. The bond market currently seems unconvinced by this suggestion and bond yield continue to gap out in global markets – most notable in the UK.Equity markets have been a bit choppier over the past few week or so and the strain of higher oil prices as well as the bond market movements have continued to introduce some uncertainty. The traditional relationship with higher bond yields would be that as bond yields rise, the equity market premium has to adjust in order to compensate for the higher risk run in equities. We turn as the last section of the podcast to Emerging Markets, which have been buoyed by strong sentiment, strong currencies and relative attractiveness of their bond yields as the dollar comes under pressure. Joe discusses the reasons for the higher bond yield and how this relates to the dollar outlook, and suggests that it is coherent. He further cites the evolution of many emerging market institutions from their crisis fighting mode into a newer state that is instilling confidence and trust – due to measures like raising rates to avert hyperinflation or maintaining independence and an even keel amid geopolitical uncertainty. This all underscores the case for diversification of portfolios, and careful rebalancing.

In today's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we are joined by Mark Tinker, CIO of Tosca Fund Management in Hong Kong, and, more importantly for us here a prominent commentator and the author of two blogs - Market Thinking and This Is Not Investment Advice.In this extended (full) version of the Markets Happy Hour recording of earlier today we discuss cost-push v. demand-pull inflation and why only one can be controlled - what the REAL intention of of the Fed and Scott Bessent is, and how there is more alignment than might be assumed (hint it ties back to the hyperscalers and their ability to raise capital).We discuss the fragility of some of the AI models and the case for rotation into the second tier beyond the hyper-scalers and ask about the robustness of the current earnings wave. Just like other data is increasingly uncertain, the data we are seeing in earnings may be self-referential too - just like the AI financing boom we have been seeing.Our deeper dive version of this podcast debates the reason for the struggle of active managers in recent years as well as a thought experiment around AI financing and what is actually real using an example of the subscribers on Mark's blog.

In today's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we are joined by Mark Tinker, CIO of Tosca Fund Management in Hong Kong, and, more importantly for us here a prominent commentator and the author of two blogs - Market Thinking and This Is Not Investment Advice. We have here an abbreviated version of our longer discussion which involved two deeper dives as set out below.This abbreviated version touches on cost-push v. demand-pull inflation and why only one can be controlled - what the REAL intention of of the Fed and Scott Bessent is, and how there is more alignment than might be assumed (hint it ties back to the hyperscalers and their ability to raise capital).We discuss the fragility of some of the AI models and the case for rotation into the second tier beyond the hyper-scalers and ask about the robustness of the current earnings wave. Just like other data is increasingly uncertain, the data we are seeing in earnings may be self-referential too - just like the AI financing boom we have been seeing.Our deeper dive version of this podcast is also listed in the same channel. In that we do a deeper dive into the struggle of active managers in recent years as well as a thought experiment around AI financing and what is actually real.

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast I am delighted to be joined by Anastasia Amoroso, Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist at Partners Group. Our conversation starts with a traditional vibe check on the narratives and counter-narratives driving market sentiment. She speaks about a multi - engine economy growing thanks to a stable consumer, soaring Capex, spending on areas such as defence. We move then to discuss Scott Bessent's Big Bet, which is clearly that his intervention in the bond market wills stem the rise at the long end of the yield curve. Anastasia notes the difference in focus of each of the Fed and the Treasury Secretary with a focus on different ends of the curve, and notes the reason for long term yields being as high as they are - higher growth expectations, the stickier inflation, but also the sell-off by other US Treasury bond holders. Discussing geopolitics she notes the amount of oil still flowing through the Strait of Hormuz and the fact that only a fraction of the trade between the US and Canada are actually affected by tariffs, and we mull over the workarounds that are likely to follow once the new realities of global trade filter through.Finally we focus on the innovation economy and the role of private equity in it - noting the uptick in flows into private equity so far this year and the role that private equity investors are likely to play in driving innovation within their portfolio companies. In conclusion we note the passing of music legend and philanthropist Dolly Parton and how she defied expectations, leaving you with her immortal words "Find out who you are, and do it on purpose" .

This week we have a bonus episode of the Markets Happy Hour podcast in which we feature Charles-Henry Monchau, CIO of Syz Bank, recorded on site in Geneva. I have followed Charles-Henry and his original – and sometimes provocative – takes on LinkedIN for some time and it was great to gather his views as summer comes to an end. Our conversation features a Europe-based lens on market events and dynamics and we begin with a discussion of the Swiss budget surplus – an increasingly anomalous feature among developed nations. We turn then to the European economic vibes and the prevailing conclusion is that earnings, growth numbers and other economic indicators are generally better than expected revealing a surprising resilience. We ask whether the sluggishness that led to many European nations not being at the frontlines of the current AI buildout may not be such a disadvantage after all. Certain nations such as France have abundant nuclear power, data centre construction is underway and policy moves to protect AI sovereignty might place local operators in a strong position. Charles-Henry points out that European companies would be well placed to see productivity gains from AI, given their relatively small size. He notes the earnings bull market in Europe which could be enough to push markets higher. We discuss how Europe benefits from global trade and also how its dependence on US services is very different from 2008.The weakness in Europe is not just from AI but also from the European industrial base, and he notes that Europe will have to invest in itself and really focused on innovation. When discussing the USD and its recent weakness Charles-Henry argues that the US is being forced into the choice of supporting the bond market OR the currency, and like Japan has prioritised supporting the bond market, given the debt load as well as the dependence on rates within the economy.

In this week’s Markets Happy Hour Podcast we are joined by Anwiti Bahuguna Co-CIO of Northern Trust Asset Management, who has had a long history of multi-asset investment for a range of institutional and wealth management clients. The title of the podcast refers to the "Ferragosto" phase of Eurosummer, which has been tumultuous and newsfilled, and quite ferocious bot in terms of its heat and its pace. Discussing inflation, Anwiti argues that the current AI buildout is predominantly inflationary, and we discuss how this translates into an underweight to bonds in the multi-asset programmes that she runs at Northern Trust Asset Management. The economy is fundamentally strong, which is shoring up equity markets and driving them to new highs, she stresses that the cyclical forces have been weaker while structural forces remaining quite robust. This disconnect is evident in the bond market when we compare developed markets, which in the past week have seen rates gap out to a 19 year high in the case of the US 30 year. We reflect on the two consecutive Fed interventions (the first one around the Yen and the second one around bond buying in the long end of the US) in the bond market as revealing as to the importance that is placed on shoring up the fixed income market (a theme echoed during our Europe-featured bonus podcast also launched today). We also ask if the initial negative reaction to the Fed communication schedule is premature - given the very early stage of the tenure of the new Chair. Anwiti suggests that any change would be received with some trepidation, and that this does not necessarily point to a Fed that is "losing the room". Turning to equity markets we strip out the tech effect and see that under Trump 2.0 equity markets have been broadly strong. This should not suggest, however, that other sectors are not exposed to AI, it does continue to underpin all sector momentum. Looking on a global level - we discuss the earnings strength on a global front, and point to the earnings growth in Emerging Markets, Europe and Japan, and look to the relatively strong performance of emerging markets as a whole. There are of course exceptions here - losers as well as winners - in particular in India, which has been hugely boosted by outsourcing recently. This has recently seen some attrition led by AI.To conclude we discuss the cracks in the current positive momentum, suggesting that both the higher yields present in hyperscaler credit as well as the hesitation regarding private credit segment all point to a healthy scepticism regarding boundless capex spend, as well as the potential for some loans to go bad. The suggests that the biggest "scorecard" for private credit is what is happening in the investment grade market and the reckoning there.