A Reality Check

Alex Scott, Chief Strategist, Seven Investment Management (7IM) For the first time in over a year, markets have fallen sharply. Keeping a cool head about markets is important when others are panicking. We believe that…

Are choppier waters ahead?

Alex Scott, Chief Strategist, Seven Investment Management In many ways, 2017 was far better than expected. The global economy certainly performed ahead of expectations, showing decisive and synchronised growth for the first time in several…

Seven scenarios for seven stockmarkets

By Ben Kumar, Investment Manager, Seven Investment Management   Global growth can easily be described as ‘humming’ and the world seems to have confidence in that growth, be that trade led or domestically driven through…

Reasons to be cheerful

Alex Scott, Chief Strategist, Seven Investment Management   At first glance, there’s a lot to like about the investment landscape as we look ahead. After a year of synchronised growth across the major global economies…

Still swimming in calm seas?

Alex Scott, Deputy Chief Investment Officer, Seven Investment Management Markets are maintaining the state of dead calm that we wrote about last month. The clock ticks on, with little sign of equity volatility. The tally…

Why the interest in cryptocurrencies?

By Ben Kumar, Investment Manager When something is being touted as a new asset class, multi-asset managers should pay attention, and there is a real buzz going on about cryptocurrencies at the moment. Since April…

A state of dead calm

Alex Scott, Deputy Chief Investment Officer, Seven Investment Management As we write, stockmarkets are in the midst of an eerie calm. It’s worth understanding the historical context of just how extraordinary today’s conditions really are.…

A love of acronyms

by Ben Kumar, Investment Manager, Seven Investment Management Ideas are dangerous things. Acronyms are worse. Acronyms distil complex ideas into something easy to remember. If they get really popular, however, the acronym becomes the idea.…

A difficult balancing act

Alex Scott, Deputy Chief Investment Officer, Seven Investment Management Investors face a potentially difficult balancing act today. There is much to be positive – even optimistic – about. Most major economies are growing at or…

What’s in a name?

Ben Kumar, Investment Manager, Seven Investment Management Have a look at this list: 1.          Apple 2.         Alphabet 3.          Microsoft 4.         Amazon 5.          Berkshire Hathaway 6.         Johnson & Johnson 7.          Facebook 8.         Alibaba Group 9.          Tencent…

Tracking the economy

Ben Kumar, Investment Manager, Seven Investment Management In finance ‘footsie’ means something other than tangle-toed flirting. The FTSE 100 is the first stock index encountered by newcomers to the world of finance. It is often…

The mixed messages are concerning

Ben Kumar, Investment Manager, Seven Investment Management When we look at the financial markets, the mixed messages are concerning. By extrapolating today’s low interest rate environment almost indefinitely into the future, quality government bond markets…

Plus ça change: credit crunch 10 years on

Chris Darbyshire, Chief Investment Officer, Seven Investment Management Viewers of Paramount’s ‘The Big Short’, will remember a scene towards the end of the film when the US housing market is in freefall, mortgages are defaulting…

When will you retire?

Matthew Yeates, Quantitative Investment Manager New research from Seven Investment Management (7IM) has highlighted that many in the UK believe that early retirement is an impossible dream. On average, people would like to retire at…

An Outlook – On Guard

Alex Scott, Deputy Chief Investment Officer Last month, we focused this commentary on our currency positioning: we prepared portfolios for the possibility of Sterling strength as the government position on Brexit is forced to soften…

Expect things to get a bit more difficult

Chris Darbyshire, Chief Investment Officer Can political uncertainty become so elevated that it affects a country’s economy? We are about to find out. British businesses, already dealing with the coming departure from the EU, must…