Market Wrap

Each month we publish Market Wrap, a summary of the previous month’s local and international economic highlights.

With inflation at 40-year highs in the US and UK and at a 60-year high in Europe, central bank policy remained front and centre of attention globally.
The ongoing war in Ukraine and further upward pressure on energy prices also cast a shadow over markets.
Risk assets continued to struggle against this background. In fact, the bellwether S&P 500 Index in the US has recorded the worst five-month start to a year since 1970.
Fixed income markets have also been hampered by evolving interest rate expectations. We need to go even further back in time to find a worse start to the year for bonds. US Treasuries, for example, have not performed as poorly in the first five months of a calendar year since the late-1700s!
Other asset classes have struggled too. Gold is down more than 10% from its March peak and cryptocurrencies have endured a torrid run; Bitcoin is down by a third since late March and has now lost around half of its value over the past six months.

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