With the summer very much over, unless something material changes it is downhill to a particularly nasty global recession, with the UK skirting ever closer.

For large parts of August, investor risk appetite was relatively muted as players stayed out of the market, waiting to hear what US Fed Chair Jerome Powell had to say on 26 August.

On the face of it, there appeared to be little change during the month of July compared to June, yet these proved to be very different months.

Last month we wrote about red flags, well those flags were raised even higher in June.

There were so many red flags out in May that it was difficult to know which way to turn.

April was largely about war, global slowdown, China lockdown and Fed rate hikes.

Ukraine, Russia, China and the Fed…

February markets were dominated by the tragic events in Ukraine.

January was a difficult month on many different levels. Geopolitically, tensions ratcheted up in the Ukraine, and on the economic front, it was all about inflation and rate rises.

2021 may have been dominated by Covid, yet markets continued to hit new highs and we saw M&A activities go through the roof, but we also saw the Fed starting to rein in the excess.