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January Market Review 2024

January Economic Background • U.S inflation higher than anticipated • Federal Reserve holds rates at 5.25-5.5% • Chinese equities continue their downward trend • Red-sea conflict causes shipping rates for Asia-to-Europe routes to surge Source: Morningstar (MSCI ACWI IMI; Bloomberg Global Agg) Market Review U.S Economy: In December, U.S. inflation exceeded predictions, reaching 3.4% annually – surpassing the expected 3.2%. This development dampened market expectations of an imminent decrease in interest rates, originally anticipated for…

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Sustainability Disclosure Requirements & Investment labels – Final Policy Statement released by the FCA – ebi’s response

On Tuesday 28th November, the FCA published their long-awaited final Policy Statement for the Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR) and Investment Labels regime. This followed their previous October 2022 Consultation Paper, on which widespread feedback was provided by the industry in a range of areas across almost 250 responses. The following summarises some of the key aspects of the Policy Statement, including providing insight on where changes have been introduced in comparison to the previous Consultation…

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The Problems with Property

Introduction The last couple of weeks have seen further pain in the UK open-ended property fund market. On 19th October, fund manager M&G announced that it would be closing its £565m Property Portfolio fund, due to “declining retail investor interest across this fund structure”. This means that daily dealing into and out of the fund has been halted, and the fund will enter the winding-up process – selling underlying assets and returning the AUM remaining…

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