The weekly update covers NVDA's excellent earnings; the A.I. shine which is wearing off; the minutes from the last FOMC meeting (Oct); and the fall of Bitcoin.

The U.S. government reopened this week although – coincidentally or not – U.S. equities swooned. The issue remains full-on valuations of U.S. stocks coupled with growing concerns with the enormous amounts of A.I. spend being put forward by many tech companies.

There are no shortage of investors which think stocks are well over-baked, especially stocks of companies that are directly or indirectly associated with the ongoing A.I. hype.  It has appeared for weeks that this was nothing more than scaremongering as stocks continued their stratospheric rise.  However, the past week saw scepticism start to set in as investor concerns regarding valuations broadened.  Tech stocks led the sell-off, although there were few places to hide as mo

A.I. featured large again last week, mainly because it was the key talking point as five of the Mag 7 companies released earnings with mixed results. The FOMC decision also went as expected, although Mr Powell threw some caution into the wind. Global stock markets took it in stride, but the US Treasury market was less happy as yields rose across the curve. Gold was weaker again, and the US Dollar strengthened.

Writing this weekly update is starting to get boring, because everything goes up every week, or so it seems.  Having said that, one casualty this past week was gold, which finally seems to have come off the boil.  The price of gold declined nearly 6% on Tuesday, and then stabilised but still ended down 1.8% on the week, the first weekly decline in the price of this safe haven precious metal since mid-August.  All global equity indices were higher (yawn) on the week – most end

The melt up continued in risk markets until late Friday morning, when a post of Mr Trump's Truth Social website reported that the U.S. would impose additional 100% tariffs on Chinese imports into the U.S. starting Nov 1st because of further restrictions by China on their export of critical earth minerals. In any event, this one way trajectory up needed a pause. Monday will be interesting!

Another strong quarter for investors has come and gone, with the third quarter “buy any and everything” rally carrying on as we start the...

It was a slow drift lower in US stocks and bonds this past week, although Friday's PCE (inflation, August) and other economic data was sufficiently balanced to create a slight bounce. Global stocks were mixed, with U.K. and Japanese stocks generating the best returns WoW.

It was a holiday shortened, rather lacklustre week in markets. Good that 2022 is over. FY returns were poor across equities and bonds.