Through his speeches and writings, Warren Buffet's late ‘right-hand man’ left a legacy of real life and investment lessons. Excerpt below (source: Compounding Quality on X)

Key takeaways: • After a strong first half of the year for equity markets, we believe that there are 5 key themes to watch in the coming months: 1) Normalisation of global economic growth; 2) Labour market normalisation; 3) Central banks kicking off their easing cycle; 4) The normalisation of the equity market leadership and; 5) A pick-up in volatility. • On a more tactical basis, our view on risk assets remains constructive but there are indeed a few indicators which lead us to become slightly more prudent as we head into Summer. As such, we have been rebalancing our clients’ portfolios to reflect our neutral view on equities. We recently decreased our slight tactical overweight on equities back to neutral. We remain underweight fixed income and overweight alternatives and Gold. We also decided to downgrade our view on the JPY from NEUTRAL to negative vs USD and all major currencies. We remain positive dollar against EUR, GBP and CHF.

Economic growth is soft, external challenges rise, but China stays the course. This is essentially the conclusion that can be drawn after the Third Plenum and the most recent economic data. The focus of Xi Jinping is not on trying to maximize short-term economic growth, but rather on continuing the transformation and modernization of the economy. As Donald Trump looks set to return to the White House with a new set of tariffs in his MAGA cap, as Europe eventually raises trade barriers of its own, as sanctions on Russia redefine energy and commodity trade flows, China is central to the ongoing emergence of a new world economic order.

One of the spiritual fathers of behavioral finance passed away in March this year. Below, we pay tribute to Daniel Kahneman by highlighting 10 of his main empirical studies in the field.

“ Creativity is just connecting things.” Steve Jobs

New technologies linked to blockchain are likely to play an important role in the luxury goods industry in the coming years. Overview below with a few case studies.

Brace for elections in Europe and keep a close eye on inflation.

H2 2024

As demonstrated in the recent European elections, populism is in vogue in many developed countries. This is a long-term trend with major macroeconomic consequences.

1. The long view by Adrien Pichoud,Chief Economist 2. European equities: reasons to be fearful, reasons to be cheerful by Gaël Combes,Head of Equities 3. Fixed income: OAT spreads on the rise while credit spreads remain well behaved by Gaël Fichan, Senior Portfolio Manager – Head of Fixed Income 4. Forex: Euro is (again) under pressure by Adrien Pichoud