The summer of discontent?

COMMENT

Max King, strategist and portfolio manager on the Investec Asset Management multi-asset team, gives an overview of market movements in the summer months.

This summer’s macroeconomic events have had remarkably little impact on financial markets. Warren Buffett once quipped, “The cemetery for seers has a huge section set aside for macro forecasters.” Presumably it has an even larger one for the armchair analysts of current affairs. The drivers of equity markets in 2013 have been mundane factors such as valuations, earnings, cash returns to investors and fund flows, rather than global events and economics. For bond investors, it has been even simpler: government bond yields at multi-century lows had only one direction to go – up. Equit...