Economics

Equity markets fell on Wednesday with the S&P 500 down 3.1%, extending the index’s losses to 9.4% since hitting an all-time closing high just a few weeks ago on 20 September. With today’s decline the S&P 500 has erased its price gain for the year.

US economic growth should hold up even as quantitative tightening continues to take its toll in emerging markets, Europe grapples with ongoing structural issues and the UK is hamstrung by Brexit, according to Talib Sheikh, manager of the Jupiter Flexible Income Fund. “In these tricky conditions, flexibility and having options are key to managing risk, he added.

Fed Chairman Powell reiterated the FOMC’s view of the economy as unusually favorable; Argentina has made some gains, courtesy of the IMF; Italy’s latest budget is still a work in progress.

Financial markets have staged a remarkable recovery since the fall of Lehman Brothers, but it’s been a joyless affair,” says Vice Chairman Edward Bonham Carter. “The ending of central bank support, both feared and wanted, hangs like a sword of Damocles over the market.”

Trade volumes, trade agreements, and tariffs have been the focus of capital markets over the last year. Capital markets have taken the existing unencumbered trade regime as a given, and priced in the continuation of the existing order of ever-expanding trade and lower tariffs that would benefit all parties involved.