Market update

In last month’s update we touched upon the French and British general elections, however at the time of writing the UK election hadn’t yet taken place and the French election had only passed its first round. Now that both elections have concluded we can take a deeper dive into market reactions.

This month's Investment Market Update looks at how markets have developed since last month’s update, reiterating the benefits of portfolio diversification. The drivers of the top 3 performing major equity indices are looked at in more detail and we discuss the recent and upcoming elections globally and the impact of these on markets.

In our Investment Market Update this month, we cover the following two themes: How April 2024 contrasted to Q1, leading to the benefits of diversification as well as the impact of the change in monetary policy expectations in April and how this drove returns.

With the first quarter of the year already wrapped up (it feels like Christmas was yesterday!) we thought it would be worth recapping the high-level macroeconomic picture and summarising the notable movements in markets through the quarter.

This month we explore how investors might be rewarded for holding a diversified portfolio and whilst one cannot time the markets the outlook for asset prices remains positive this year.

As 2024 has started, two key themes have been driving markets; the change in market expectations of interest rates and the results of the US corporate earnings season. Find out more in our latest investment market update.