Bad news, good news
This week began (belatedly for us Britons) with bad news and seems to be ending with some good news. I’ll concentrate first on some overseas influences before looking at the UK.
Investing in competition: competition or concentration?
The retail economic landscape is changing. Amazon, like Google, Facebook and Netflix are leveraging fundamental changes in the market, utilising electronic commerce platforms, tactical acquisitions and other strategies to move from simple online retailers (or search engine) to bookstore, media publisher, games producer, telecommunications provider and now even grocery deliverer. There are now few retail markets in which one or another of these large e-commerce companies does not operate.
Hurricane Harvey
Harvey, the third hurricane of the 2017 season (after Franklin and Gert) made landfall in Aransas County, Texas on the evening of Friday 25th August, bringing with it a record amount of rain to the continental US (almost 52 inches in places. source: link).
China remains solid, while Japan’s economy continues to brighten
Initially, markets may have been rattled by news that a North Korean missile flew over the Japanese island of Hokkaido, but the stream of improving economic data from across the world, especially in Japan and China, appeared to help soothe investor jitters.
Please click here for the full Tatton commentary.
