Making sense of this crazy world
You snooze, you lose!
The world is in turmoil, yet many markets are powering forward. For companies, it seems it’s a case of you either adapt or you lose your competitive advantage.
This may be around the changes in weather patterns, the use of AI, improving supply chains, access to efficient energy supplies, natural resources and precious minerals, sustainability or the recruitment of specialist skills, to name but a few.
This week I’ll provide some examples of how important adaptation is to survive and flourish.
Meanwhile, global stocks climbed towards a record high again and bonds recovered as a subdued US inflation report eased concerns about the possibilities of a US interest rate hike. After a six-day rally, oil prices fell on Thursday due to reports around the US war with Iran, albeit those reports were conflicting. The VIX index measuring the volatility of stocks has fallen to pre-Iran conflict levels.
Good news for the UK as the economy grew by 0.4% in the second quarter of this year. This feeds into the narrative that companies/economies are weathering the threats from the Gulf crisis and are finding alternatives to rising energy prices.
Europe too has proved very resilient with investors looking to get back into the region.
Reinforcing the appetite for technology stocks is the planned Initial Public Offering (IPO) for Anthropic in October, expected to bring a valuation of $2 trillion or more, ‘eclipsing’ (had to get this topical word in today’s Commentary) SpaceX. The thoughts from many backers, according to the FT, is that it’s rapidly rising revenue would enable it to more than double its current valuation in a planned autumn flotation.
Then we’ve had the announcement from Nvidia that a coalition of major financial firms have committed more than $500 billion to help fund their AI infrastructure buildout.
Eye watering stuff indeed and, for most investors, difficult to comprehend, but there is a real appetite out there for sure. Change is happening at a pace!
This week’s content:
- Adapt or wither on the vine
- Adapting oil supplies
- Improving supply chains
- Global stock volatility reduces
- The UK economy grows better than expected
- How the world has changed
- Nvidia announces eye watering investments
- Conclusion
Adapt or wither on the vine
An appropriate phrase bearing mind, here in the UK, we’ve had the fifth heatwave this year and across Europe temperatures have been nigh on unbearable at times, with an abundance of forest fires. Agriculture has been badly hit and there are fears over rising food prices. Farmers are having to adapt and vineyard owners are doing whatever they can to prevent fires ruining their harvests.
An example of adapting to challenges is how farmers are harvesting in the darkness to catch the slight dew that settles on rapeseed oil. Then they harvest other crops throughout the day which are less sensitive to moisture content. Like us all, the farmers are really struggling to get their full quota of sleep but they have no option.
Continues…
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