For one more week, at least, we will devote the first part of this review to the trade and markets situation before moving on to broader adviser news.
Now this is a news review but at time of writing, the Trump administration had taken phones and computers out of the tariff regime as the BBC reported over the weekend, though now the commerce secretary Howard Lutnick says it is a temporary move and that tariffs will eventually be imposed on microchips as AP reported on Sunday.
It will be interesting to see how markets interpret this ‘reprieve’ this week.
There has been a lot of focus on how the bond market will react to all this.
The Boston Federal Reserve President Susan Collins has confirmed that the Federal Reserve itself will intervene to calm nervous markets particularly around US Treasuries, if required.
The Financial Times, quite rightly, devoted its weekend front page to the story.
JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon was last week putting the risk of a US recession at 50:50 as the Times reported, and that came after the following climbdown.
Thursday saw the first tariff U-turn described by Reuters as ‘stunning’ while noting a record bounce in US stock prices. However, US and global markets remain incredibly nervous.
There is cynicism about just what a 90 day pause means in reality. CNN reports that President Trump has 90 days to do 150 trade deals and suggests financial markets aren’t buying it.
The BBC asked what a US China trade war would do to the world economy.
Morningstar is having a good crisis. It considers what UK stocks are at risk from Trumps’ tariffs, here, but of course the picture keeps shifting.
Advisers are likely trying to consider what the crisis means so this sounds useful from Citywire New Model Adviser. Its analysis considers how model portfolio services have performed so far during the tariff ructions.
In other news, FTAdviser reports that UK GDP growth in March was a “genuinely impressive 0.5%”. Repeat that over a year and it would be a boom. Probably best not to get your hopes up.
New Model Adviser looks at what is calls the FCA's 'sprint' to create a new type of advice for £10k pots.
It reports that the FCA’s trialling of cash-to-equity products, a key part of the regulator's growth mandate has demonstrated how targeted support can work in practise.
The trail involves 12 firms but no advisers. That is a shame, I believe.
Very interesting to see Money Marketing columnist Nic Cicutti attacking Chancellor Rachael Reeves deregulation agenda even to the extent of risking a repeat of misselling scandals.
We quote one par – “It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that, in Reeves’ world, scandals such as the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI), pensions or endowments would have gone undetected and/or uncompensated.”
