April saw a marked change in the dismal stockmarket performance this year. How come?
It’s not every month that a 60+ year war appears to have concluded. I’m all in favour of wrapping up these geopolitical loose ends, but I don’t think my portfolio cared that much about the history being made in Korea.
Tech has had a good month. Trump has been momentarily distracted from Amazon-bashing; Netflix reported strong growth; so did Google, and so on. My small Tech portfolio was up 8% on the month.
Trump has also had, dare I say it, a relatively good month on his trade bashing. Sentiment is starting to move in his favour on this, at least in what I read, helped by the sense that some important tariffs may fall under his assault on China/etc. Shareholders of Boeing, anything Russian etc haven’t had much fun but the rest of us have got plenty to celebrate.
Overall equities in most markets were up. FTSE gained almost 6% on the month. The US dollar rose 2% and its stock market climbed by more than that. Other main equity markets that I track – notably Eurozone and Australia – gained 4%. At this rate the stock markets have almost recovered the losses so far in the year.
Bonds dropped but only slightly. Overall the blended markets I track rose by 5% in April; 4% in constant currencies, and a 1% uplift provided by the USD.
FIRE v London 