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Rathbones’ Coombs: “Investors’ greatest risk in 2019 could be investors themselves.”
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
As market sentiment hits new lows, Rathbones’ David Coombs discusses why he welcomes the recent volatility and continues to back equities.
Rathbones' Smith: Lower growth and tight fiscal policy are here to stay
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
Uncharacteristically, the Chancellor delivered a Budget that took the savings accrued from the better than expected revenues of the last two years and reallocated them to future spending.
Rathbones' Smith: Shedding light on Brexit "unknowns" - Brexit decision tree
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
Rathbones today releases its “Brexit Decision Tree”. Rathbones’ head of asset allocation research, Ed Smith, believes that stopping at “we don’t know” is actually a missed opportunity.
Rathbones’ Ed Smith: US mid-terms – What does it mean politically and what is the impact on markets?
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
The final votes are still being counted but it’s clear that the Democrats have won control of the House while the Republicans have extended their majority in the Senate.
Rathbones’ Smith: Initial reaction to Brexit announcement
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
It looks like much of the nitty-gritty on trade in services, financial services regulation and fishing will be worked out during the transition period.
Rathbones’ Coombs and McIntosh-Whyte, 2019 outlook: Ditch the Models
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
Something has been creeping into our minds over the past few years: in everything from technology, politics and risk to the dynamics of interest rates, the models of yesterday appear to be breaking down.
Investment Insights Q1 2019
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
Global stock markets have been unsettled by political and economic uncertainty recently, and swung significantly between gains and losses in the final weeks of 2018. President Trump’s criticism of the Federal Reserve’s latest interest rate rise added to concerns that US consumer demand may be cooling. Meanwhile, trade tensions between America and China continue despite a temporary truce.
Rathbones’ Smith looks at the key macro issues for the year ahead
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
At the start of 2018 we identified the concerns that eventually weighed on equity markets, but we hadn’t anticipated the big drop in valuations that would follow.
Is General Electric’s slipping credit rating a warning to all bond investors?
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
Witnessing a former great fall from grace is never pleasant viewing. When it is an ex-bond market darling, and you are watching its credit rating fall away from top-notch AAA to the opposite end of the investment-grade scale, it makes very painful viewing for bondholders. This has been the fate of General Electric (GE), the largest company by market capitalisation earlier this century, and its bondholders in 2018.
Brexit vote: kicking the can down the road
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
Julian Chillingworth and Ed Smith
Rathbones’ Smith: Reduced risk of a ‘no deal’
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
The Brexit saga has taken a predictable turn, though the rout that Prime Minister Theresa May suffered in Tuesday’s Parliamentary vote on her Brexit deal was historical in its magnitude.
Losing control
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
Today Theresa May has to present her alternative Brexit plan to Parliament. Facing a hostile House of Commons, the Prime Minister says she won’t do so. Instead, she will reiterate that she is continuing to negotiate with the EU in a bid to unpick the Gordian knot of the Irish backstop. In a chilling echo through time, while Mrs May was trying to shore up support among English Brexiteers a bomb blast shook Londonderry. An IRA splinter group took responsibility. According to one version of history, Alexander the Great untied the impossible knot by cutting it.