With much in the news to digest, as anticipated this week, it seems that whilst the tabloid press seem intent on focusing on the blame game and other negativity, there are useful updates and insights to be found, if you dig a little deeper.
As we hit/pass the peak of the virus outbreak in the UK and hopefully across Europe, we are already being warned to prepare for a second phase of Covid19, possibly later this year, making the need for a vaccine ever more critical. On the treatment side of things, we not only have our own UK trial, with Oxford University piloting a potential new ‘treatment’, but on a considerably larger scale, a company called Moderna in the US have been granted $483 million by the US government to enable them to fast-track trials on their vaccine, which looks extremely encouraging.
Today sees a pivotal day, with the US jobless figure to be released (they expect the figure to be around 26 million!) and also a lot of company reporting updates within the UK and Europe, all of which will make grim reading I’m sure, but hopefully in keeping with market expectations.
We are also seeing a rise in the price of oil which, whatever your own views on the stuff, is a good thing for investment markets, as it is a sign of economies gearing up to kick into action again, with the US threatening to do so by as early as tomorrow.
Looking at investment markets, with inflation falling (as can be expected), there will be no threat of rising interest rates for now and in sharemarkets there are strong expectations in certain quarters for growth, with JP Morgan (US) saying that they see sharemarket all-time highs being achieved by the middle of 2021 and an analyst (also US) saying that they feel we are entering a buyers’ market (Bull market) and have found the bottom of the markets now; time will tell and please don’t shoot the messenger, but I’ll happily take positive news like that!
So whilst life is still far from normal in the UK and expected to be so for some months to come, investment markets do seem to be tentatively greeting a new dawn, though I still suspect we will hit some bumps along the way to what will hopefully be a strong global recovery over the next year or so.