Never was the statement “Markets can fall as well as rise” more true than in August, when virtually all major markets headed down.
July was a busy month. Greece held a referendum on austerity – with an emphatic rejection, before a bailout on the same lines as the rejection was finally agreed. The Chancellor delivered his second Budget this year whilst Chinese markets fell dramatically.
An essential part of writing this bulletin each month is making daily notes on the main business and stock market news. This month we have comfortably broken our record – more than six pages of notes. And as you might expect, about half of those pages are about Greece and its debts.
May saw the election of a Conservative majority Government, whilst in Europe, Greece teetered on the edge of default, Germany and France edged towards closer European ties. The Nasdaq index in the USA reached a record high. Chinese exports fell and the Japanese economy grew. There were continuing problems for Russia whilst India had remarkably good news – it has now grown at a faster rate than China in two of the last three quarters.
In the UK voters are taking to the polls in one of the most difficult-to-predict General Election for generations – whilst the rest of the world continues with business as usual.
With the upcoming election and George Osborne’s Budget delivered on 18th March, it was easy to overlook some significant events in March.
For the first time since we started this bulletin all the major world stock markets moved resolutely upwards in February, especially the UK.
A fall in UK inflation was this month, coupled with the Greek election victory for Syriza, the far-left coalition under Alexis Tsipras.
Traditionally, December is a ‘slow news’ month, but not in 2014 with the Autumn Statement, tumbling oil prices and gloom over the Eurozone.