The Selloff That Never Came: ‘Of Politics And Pullbacks’

One of the defining characteristics of the ongoing risk rally over the past 14 months has been its remarkable resilience in the face of epochal political shifts and a world at war. Brexit, Trump, the near-miss in France with Marine Le Pen - all of those events had the potential to do lasting damage to market sentiment and yet none of them did. Sure, a lack of progress in talks between the UK and the EU has weighed on the pound. And yes, Donald Trump's learning-by-doing approach to being the le

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3 thoughts on “The Selloff That Never Came: ‘Of Politics And Pullbacks’

  1. Agreed on the central banks point but I wonder about the other.

    You say we’re too desensitized to violence to realize what’s going on, but I wonder if it’s really that in the West we’re actually increasingly remote from any conception of serious political geopolitical instability as something that might affect their investments as more than a transient shock. Someone 15 years into their career today would have spent all of it post-9/11. Someone 25 years into their career spent all of it post-Cold War. No one who has lived only in North America or western Europe has lived through serious internal upheaval in their own country. We’re so used to thinking of politicians as jokers that it can be hard to remember they’re actually driving the car.

    This is certainly why so many people started out so sanguine about the prospects for a president who was very obviously, from day one, manifestly incapable of the leadership expected of him.

  2. Curious that in many instances the sell off precedes the attributable event. In some cases surely sentiment turned negative in a deteriorating context and the event date was just the climax. But why did the 9/11 sell off start the day before? Conspiracy theorists anyone?