In the last week of the competition the markets performed well in the US. The S&P went up by 1.67%, Nasdaq100 by 1.25% and DJIA1.85%. In Europe, AEX went up by 0.05% and Stoxx600 was down by -0.07%. FTSE 100 went up by 0.22%.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected that the global economy will grow by 6% in 2021 and 4.9% in 2022. The IMF has also warned of several shocks that have hit a world economy already weakened by the pandemic: higher-than-expected inflation worldwide –– especially in the United States and major European economies –– triggering tighter financial conditions; a worse-than-anticipated slowdown in China, reflecting COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns.
Apple has been forced to make drastic cuts to production forecasts for the mixed-reality Vision Pro headset. The complexity of the headset they announced earlier had more difficulties in production than anticipated and caused apple to fall behind on their schedule, pushing back the plans for a more affordable version of the device. Apple has already flagged that the $3,500 “spatial computing” headset device will not go on sale until “early next year”, a lengthy gap from its June 5 launch. Analysts have interpreted this as being more to do with supply chain problems than allowing developers more time to create content.
Chinese companies have been hoarding dollars lately: increasing their greenback deposits from $758bn at the end of 2019 to $912bn at the moment. They put China’s overall dollar accumulation at $2tn, and estimate that Chinese corporate dollar deposits are now actually closer to $1.78tn (of which about half is held in accounts with Chinese banks). Economists warn that this configuration is fundamentally unstable and that prospective rate cuts by the FED and/or an economic reacceleration in China could lead to a precipitous fall in USD/CNY, as corporate treasurers in China scramble to sell the dollars they don’t need to have.
In the UK government debt has delivered the worst returns of any major bond market in the first half of this year. An ICE Bank of America index of UK government bonds — known as gilts — has fallen by 3.7 per cent in the first half of 2023. Meanwhile, other big bond markets have delivered positive returns as inflation has eased and other central banks appear closer to the end of their cycle of rate rises.
Flow Traders Investment Competition Update
Last Thursday the Flow Traders Investment Competition came to an end. The top three will not be revealed until the End of the Year BBQ on July 13th, so we hope to see you there. Since we can not talk about the top three of the competition we can look at the rest, starting at the bottom we have Batavia Vrouwen, they started the year in the last place and ended there as well. Another notable achievement is Audacity, they won the competition last year and are now at place 44 of 46. Moving on to the tenth place we find Brut Investments, which makes them rookie of the year, congratulations! All that leaves us to say is, thank you all for participating in this year’s Flow Traders Investment Competition, making it another great edition, and we hope to see you at the End of the Year BBQ to celebrate the winners of the Flow Traders Investment Competition.
