Since proposing a US corporate tax hike earlier this year, US President Biden has worked with other nations in hopes of adopting a global minimum corporate tax rate. In July, roughly 130 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries...

Benjamin Franklin was wrong. In 1789, the polymath and first US ambassador to France wrote, “In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Franklin had overlooked the fact that since the establishment of the world’s first stock market in Amsterdam about...

With economic recoveries picking up in the West, so is chatter about potential monetary policy changes. Across the Atlantic, many financial analysts we follow dissect US Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jerome Powell’s comments for hints of what will happen with its...

In our experience, investors spend a lot of time focusing on winners and losers amongst individual securities. It is also a popular topic amongst financial publications Fisher Investments UK’s research analysts follow. But in our view, asset allocation—a portfolio’s...

In calendar year 2020, the European Union (EU) reported its trade surplus (the balance of exports minus imports) surged from €191.5 billion in 2019 to €217.5 billion, a 13.6% increase.i From 2018, last year’s surplus was up 23.0%.ii According to many financial...

Central banks’ massive monetary response to coronavirus-led government lockdowns has many commentators we follow worried inflation—economy-wide price acceleration—will spike. A common refrain Fisher Investments UK analysts hear from them: Rising inflation isn’t good...

On 24 December 2020, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed on a post-Brexit trade deal, ending a saga that triggered widespread concern from investors for over four years. Whilst the Brexit deal helps investor...

Emotions and tensions are running high in the wake of America’s recent elections. Yet, stocks have pushed forward, reacting in their typical cold, emotionless, forward-looking fashion. Why? Because stock markets focus not on any particular political race’s outcome,...

If ever there were something to cheer about, we suspect 2020’s end tops the list for many people. In addition to being cause to celebrate, we think it is also a good time to conduct an investment portfolio checkup—something investors benefit from doing periodically....

Global markets have recovered considerably since their year-to-date lowpoint in late March, and as we write, they are a little bit above their pre-COVID lockdown highs.i Yet the MSCI World Index’s price-to-earnings ratio—which attempts to measure whether share prices...

In Fisher Investments UK’s experience, investors often think what just happened will continue happening. Behavioural finance—a school of thought in investing that studies the relationship between human behaviour, feelings and money—has a term for this: recency bias....

So-called passive investing products like exchange-traded funds (ETFs)—which track particular segments of the equity market or the market as a whole—have gained popularity in Europe recently. We have seen much financial commentary describing this as a rise in passive...

As COVID restrictions knocked consumer spending globally, we saw many commentators in financial media worrying deflation—broadly falling prices across the economy—could extend and deepen the eurozone’s economic downturn. In our view, though, a prolonged stretch of...

Globally, more than 8,700 equities are listed on exchanges.i Finding ways to categorise and assess them is a key first step for any equity investor, in our view. One such way: considering company size. In our research of historical market returns, we have found...

COVID-19, the associated lockdowns and the government-directed attempts to ease the negative impact on economies have had a huge effect on many aspects of our lives. One, which may be easy for some to overlook, is on financial planning. This is perhaps most true of...

Whenever this bear market (a prolonged, fundamentally driven broad equity market decline of at least -20%) ends—and it may have by the time you read this—we expect few to believe it. Even after data later—potentially much later—start to reflect improving economic...

The economic disruptions tied to the world’s well-intended coronavirus response have wreaked havoc on jobs. Millions filed for unemployment benefits in America, Spain and Italy in March and early April.i One million Canadians lost their jobs at around the same time,...

The decade-long global bull market ended suddenly and dramatically in February, as the shutdown of businesses in reaction to COVID-19’s spread caused massive economic disruptions across the globe. The declines have been swift and jarring, which likely has many equity...