Market Commentary

Greece – The Fallout

Market Commentary | July 10, 2015

The seemingly endless Greek saga looks to be close to denouement today (9/7/15) as Prime Minister Tsipras appears to be set to acquiesce to the terms demanded by the Troika, the ECB, (and most importantly), Angela Merkel. Indeed, they are likely to be harsher than those originally rejected by the Greek people in last Sunday’s referendum. In return, there is the prospect of a new long-term aid programme, but one that will expressly not include “haircuts” for the various creditors. The question is, who are those creditors, and how much will they lose if Greece were to go bankrupt, and exit the Euro Zone (the so-called “Grexit”).

Coutts and the Orbita Fiasco

Market Commentary | June 19, 2015

In what seems to be a depressingly familiar story, we have been made aware of another banking scandal involving the mis-selling of unsuitable products to investors, this time by the venerable institution Coutts. It is by no means the first (or last) time this will happen – a Forbes article highlights the biggest scandals of 2012 (what does it say about an industry that can have at least 10 “scandals” per year?). Typing in scandal to ETF.com produces circa 6,000 hits, so it can be truly said that Industry has a FIFA-like track record in mis-behaviour. The question is therefore begged as to why investors still use (let alone trust) these firms to work on their behalf. We shall get to that later, but first the details.