Quarterly Market Round-up
Flash Stats - Q1 2022
11 Apr 2022 - Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
In our regular market round-up, we take a look at what's happened in Q1 2022.
It has been a challenging start to 2022 for investment markets. Expectations of tighter monetary policy to combat high inflation, which has been exacerbated by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, has resulted in negative returns across bond and equity markets.
Some of the headlines in Q1 2022 include:
- Russia and Ukraine represent a small share of global GDP and trade but produce a disproportionate share of key global commodity exports. Physical disruptions and sanctions have triggered broad commodity price rises which, alongside existing inflationary pressures, are increasing input costs and weighing on consumer’s real incomes.
- Russia and Ukraine represent a small share of global GDP and trade but produce a disproportionate share of key global commodity exports. Physical disruptions and sanctions have triggered broad commodity price rises which, alongside existing inflationary pressures, are increasing input costs and weighing on consumer’s real incomes.
- As a result, CPI forecasts have reached new highs while consensus forecasts for global growth have been revised downwards, but still point to a relatively robust pace of growth over 2022 and 2023 by post-GFC standards.
- Composite Purchasing Managers Indices moderated in March, but generally remain at a level consistent with month-on-month expansion: services were more resilient than manufacturing and European and North American surveys were stronger than their Asian counterparts.
- Soaring energy costs pushed headline inflation higher, but core inflation, which excludes volatile energy and food costs, also rose and is running at a 30-year high. UK, US and eurozone headline CPI inflation increased to 6.2%, 7.9% and 5.9% year-on-year, respectively, in February.
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