In today’s Markets Happy Hour Podcast - our last before the Christmas break, we ask ourselves how happy markets are feeling in this market are joy - and the answer is, well, a touch of Bah, Humbug. We first start with the surprise drop in UK inflation which may well serve as a welcome Christmas treat for the UK consumer. With inflation now coming in at 3.2% in the UK (and US inflation expectations of closer to 3.1%) could it be that the UK has slayed the stagflationary beast of Christmas past? The Bank of England is poised to cut rates today to 3.75% (from 4%), just as the US did in early December and current expectations in the US are around one further rate cut in 2026, although it is quite clear that there could well be more if the new Chair decides to start with a splash. Despite this lower inflation and recent rate cut, the consumer remains hyper focused on inflation and affordability, which continues to hurt consumer sentiment and has become elevated to a live and real election issue. Markets have been unsettled recently despite clear signs that commentators and strategists are bullish, and investors too, evidenced by the flows into equity funds and the fact that cash levels have fallen to recent lows. This is somewhat surprising given the still meaningful return on cash and it is in sync with the broad optimism that are seeing in the now ubiquitous 2026 outlooks.
The wrinkle in this optimism is the recent skittishness in equity markets just in the last few days, most of it traceable to AI concerns, and we discuss the unease around Meta’s “turbulent” AI trajectory, which has led to it underperforming some of its Magnificent 7 counterparts. In fact, if we look to the breadth of the Magnificent 7 Counterparts and how they have performed year to date it has really been Alphabet and Nvidia that have been outliers, as the chart below shows. Tesla has had the most negative sentiment, probably due to some unique leadership and market factors, but even the other stocks - despite dominating the newsflow - remain bare round trips year to date.
We look at some of the change in sentiment around China, which has seen a fascinating U turn of its own - having gone from “uninvestable” in the aftermath of rising trade tensions, concern about regulatory overreach and concern about a precarious retail sector. While fund managers assiduously removed China from EM portfolios - creating EM ex China strategies, behind the scenes something was changing. This came to the fore during Covid, when it was apparent that surveillance and technology in China had reached sophisticated levels, but also the launch of Deepseek sealed the impression that there was a giant emerging in not only AI but also EVs. This has now dawned upon investors and it has been not lost on them that Chinese stock markets have started to really resemble technology sector developments and could be a real play on technology - but maybe a questionable diversifier to the US, which is also, itself, a play on technology.
It has also been a time of turbulence in geopolitics with governments in Europe now openly speaking about the threat from Russia, and President Trump imposing a blockade on Venezuelan oil. This has already been reflected in the oil price and is likely to be a fairly contained regional skirmish, but it is nonetheless yet another piece of flooding of the zone, which will make 2026 hard to navigate.
Moving to other asset classes we reflect on the fourth annual loss for Bitcoin, although it significantly lower than previous annual losses, but ask what this means for risk sentiment broadly and the likely behaviour of this asset class.
We reflect on where portfolios may sit now that we are at the end of 2025. Clearly equity markets have done well and we do now see breadth creeping in, not only to markets themselves but also by investors seeking to diversify into other cap sectors and other asset classes. Bonds remain expensive, so are less interesting as return drivers, and we continue to stress diversified (global) equity exposure as strong growth drivers as well as infrastructure and real assets, which build in both diversification and inflation resilience.
Finally, we wish all of our listeners and followers a wonderful holiday season. See you on December 26th for our next episode, and thank you for your support in 2025.
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