The quality of the financial information you access can significantly affect your investment decisions. We have a team dedicated to keeping you up-to-date with research ranging from quarterly, long-term outlook forecasts to detailed market updates each week. Our insightful analysis is designed to give you an advantage when deciding priorities for your investment portfolio.
The Barclays Wealth research team includes four groups of specialists focussing on macroeconomics, equity, fixed income and asset allocation. We keep you informed about global macroeconomic analysis and forecasts; government bonds and corporate credit; top-down economic strategy; bottom-up stock picking and sector analysis; foreign exchange research and forecasts; property, commodities and hedge funds.
We publish research annually, quarterly, monthly and weekly as part of our Signpost suite of publications. Our Quarterly Investment Review gives you ‘big picture’ insight into the state of the markets, from top-level strategic views to bottom-up stock picks. Our Monthly Update covers the past month in the markets, individual sectors, topics in the spotlight, and the performance of our model portfolios. And every week, we analyse the latest market developments, breaking news and the outlook for the week ahead. Please see below our most recent reports.
Financial markets look considerably perkier than a few weeks ago. Their recovery has been helped by a softer oil price, encouraging a revival in risk appetite. The inflation beast remains a threat, but we are confident that it can be caged – in the developed economies at least. So we keep our small overweight to equities, and are guardedly optimistic about the future, reckoning on a semblance of normality returning to markets.
Barclays Wealth, 01 August 2008
The financial markets’ recent recovery has been accompanied by a revival of risk appetite, although this remains below pre-crunch levels. What is also reassuring is that market downturns are no longer proving more severe than their predecessors, suggesting that the ‘patient’ is gradually recovering, thanks largely to regular doses of support from the authorities.
Growth data continue to disappoint, while inflation continues to turn out higher than expected in most countries. Consensus expectations are now a lot more gloomy on GDP than they were at the start of the year, whereas modal projections for inflation are much higher. We, likewise, have continued to trim our forecasts for real GDP, with the United States being the major exception. Here we have nudged up our numbers for 2008, but left our 2009 forecast unchanged.
Signpost Monthly Update August 2008: Caging the beast [PDF, 1.40 MB]
Signpost Video Webcast with Michael Dicks [WMV, 6.8 MB, 3.5 minutes]
Signpost Storyboard, August 2008 (webcast accompanying slides) [PDF, 300 KB]
Please note you will need Adobe Reader or similar installed on your computer to view the PDF files. To watch the video you will need Windows Media Player or similar.
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