Holly's Blog: Cheese and whine party

Let’s start with the whine

General fatigue this week as any sense of festive good cheer heads south with the news of more restrictions. Imposed by those with the moral authority of a turnip.

The combined trio of rising inflation, slowing growth and Omicron have hit markets across the world, although in a more measured way than the most gloomy might have predicted.

And then serve the cheese….

It’s not all doom and gloom. The FootBrie100 has shrugged off new restrictions and things gouda been a lot worse.

Airline stocks are a pretty good barometer of how much disruption people anticipate. Even stocks like British Airways owner IAG have been fairly blasé in face of growing restrictions. Easy Jet is trading at £5.35 this morning, from highs of about £5.60 earlier in the week.

At the other end of the spectrum, Ocado and Zoom will be beneficiaries of any return to home working and lockdowns. And after frankly unsportsmanlike little peaks of exuberance on Wednesday and Thursday morning, even these lockdown-tastic shares have gone back to where they started the week.

This is one of the reasons why I love the stock market. It doesn’t lie. If you want to understand what might happen in the future, just look at the share prices of relevant companies. Don’t listen to Boris who is incapable of telling the truth although e-dam well should.

And after 2021’s party?

I think investors should still tread Caerphilly.

The supply chain problems are of course impacting growth at a time when global stock markets seem to march on regardless. The S&P 500 has had a great year. Again.

But Rishi Sunak has today spoken of bumps in the road to recovery. And in the UK, GDP grew by 0.1% in October, compared to 0.6% in September. Well short of expectations.

With inflation heading north, and growth slowing and ongoing Covid, the risks to the economy are obvious to see. It’s a tricky time and I think this unholy trio of financial bad news makes it less likely that the Bank of England will put rates up when they meet next week.

Could a (camem)bert market be on the cards in 2022? Hard to tell. We’ll be canvassing opinion from the experts over the coming weeks to bring you the industry’s tips and picks for 2022 over the festive season. Will tech stocks keep on dancing? Will sustainable funds power on? Will the poor old FTSE ever have its moment in the sun again? Will I ever have my moment in the sun again 😂

Have a cracking weekend everyone. I’ll leave you with my favourite cheese joke.

What did the cheese say to itself in the mirror? Halloumi.

Holly

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Chris McVey on the FP Octopus UK Multi Cap Income Fund 3 year anniversary.

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