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The shift to clean energy and its impact on our biodiversity
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
In late October 2023, the UK government backed calls for a global moratorium on deep-sea mining over concerns about its impact on the environment, after dozens of British scientists signed a letter entreating Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to do so.
Japanese equities are coming into the light
Last Updated: October 3, 2025
Foreign investors have long regarded the Japanese stock market as akin to a samurai defeated in battle, sitting in his crumbling castle and ruminating on the bittersweet memory of his glory years. Granted, Japan’s Topix stock index has never returned to the stratospheric level of close to 2,900 reached in 1989, shortly before the market bubble burst. However, it has surged this year to a 33-year high, helped by increasing interest from overseas investors. We think this interest is justified for several reasons, and still see a lot of potential for Japanese companies.
Can sustainable bonds offer shelter from the storm?
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
Last week’s UK inflation numbers represent yet another bump in the sometimes painfully twisty route to lower interest rates. The Bank of England (BoE) had predicted that the latest UK consumer price inflation data would show it falling sharply from 3.2% to 2.1% – within striking distance of the bank’s inflation target.
Investment Insights Q3 2024: Bond markets can be forgiving (sometimes)
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
As Rachel Reeves moves into Number 11 Downing Street, where the Chancellor lives and works, she faces a fiscal conundrum. Her party’s manifesto pledged “no return to austerity”, yet she is inheriting plans containing significant spending cuts, and her room for manoeuvre is limited. She’s pledged not to increase the four taxes that raise most revenue, and to retain fiscal rules that limit her scope to borrow. Squaring this circle won’t be easy. However, the situation is better than the gloomier prognoses suggest, and we’re still happy holding UK government bonds.
Investment update: an election to snap the uk out of its funk?
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
With Prime Minister Rishi Sunak having announced a general election for Thursday 4 July, the Conservative Party has a mountain to climb to avoid a heavy defeat. Labour has a large lead in the polls (around 20 percentage points) that has been sustained for more than a year and a half. The polls can of course be wrong, or shift – but usually only by so much. It would take a historic swing in such a short time to make a big difference to the outcome.
Investment Insights Q4 2023: Higher for longer
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
The world has changed profoundly since the late 2010s, and the opportunities available to us as investors along with it. The strategies that serve us well today will look different to those that worked best in the unusual low-rate, low-volatility environment of the last decade.
Review of the week: Yields up, pound down
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
UK government bonds are under pressure, sending borrowing costs rocketing once again. But it’s not only Britain that’s affected, and it mostly stems from across the Atlantic.
A Special Thanksgiving
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
Being schooled in the ways of America, despite not being American, it’s fitting that I took the reins of my fund in the month of Thanksgiving 20 years ago. It means there’s an annual milestone already etched in my upbringing that encourages me to reflect, give thanks for the blessings I have and take the time to remember what has passed.
Out of touch
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
UK policymakers are engineering a big squeeze on UK households this year, warns head of multi-asset investments David Coombs. Globally driven inflation should pass on its own, tightening policy risks making it worse.
Platforms are back, but not stagflation
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
In the midst of an unfolding humanitarian crisis, our thoughts are first and foremost with the people of Ukraine. But with an eye to our duty to our clients, we explain our views on the impact of the war and other big uncertainties investors are facing.
Notes on a nervous planet
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
Can our overburdened planet keep supporting all the people on it? Bryn Jones, lead manager of our Ethical Bond Fund, thinks the swelling number of people on earth raises the prospect of big shortages of basic necessities. He explains how this impacts his team’s decisions and offers some hope that bond investors can help make a difference.
A significant milestone and a turning point?
Last Updated: September 30, 2025
As the UK gears up for its first-ever Platinum Jubilee, the Rathbone Ethical Bond Fund is celebrating its own historic milestone. Fund Manager Bryn Jones looks at what might lie ahead as bond markets move into a new cycle and the transition towards a greener, more circular economy gains still more momentum.