TwentyFour Blog

For much of the past year, the AI story in markets has been one of unrestrained optimism. Firms have been racing to spend on chips, infrastructure, and data centres, and equity valuations have generally rewarded those with the boldest capital expenditure plans.

Earlier this month, we wrote about the high cost of staying in cash in the Euro market. In that note, we argued that a combination of inflation, low front-end rates and steeper curves, favoured a rotation out of cash and cash like instruments into other alternatives that delivered better real returns, including credit. Building on this argument, we wanted to extend this perspective to the US dollar market and highlight a few key points.

France is in the news again. Prime Minister Lecornu became the latest casualty of the French politics saga that began just over a year ago when president Macron called a surprise early election.

As active managers we are naturally looking for bonds that we believe are mispriced, therefore offering attractive risk-adjusted carry or, sometimes, a capital gain if market pricing falls into line with our view. Equally important is to avoid sectors facing structural or protracted cyclical downturns where we don’t think valuations reflect the fundamentals.

With much fanfare, President Trump and Prime Minister Starmer announced a “historic” trade deal between the US and UK on Thursday. The main points for the UK are a reduction in auto tariffs from 27.5% to 10% for the first 100,000 cars that enter the US, and the removal of steel and aluminium tariffs.

“Liberation Day” has landed, and not with a whimper. In extraordinary scenes in the Rose Garden of the White House, President Trump held up a board outlining the level of tariffs the US will impose on countries around the world, and in most cases they were worse than worst-case expectations.

Overnight, the CDU/CSU (the winner of the latest German election) and the SPD (the leader of the current parliament set to end on March 25) announced Germany’s largest fiscal policy shift in decades.

Markets had their first taste of Trump Tariffs 2.0 on Monday after levies on Mexican, Canadian and Chinese exports were announced over the weekend.

Federal Reserve (Fed) chair Jerome Powell had the honour of kicking off the 2025 season for the major central banks this week, swiftly followed by the chore of having to plead the fifth every time he was asked about a President Trump policy.

It has been two weeks since the primary market for collateralised loan obligations (CLOs) re-opened and 2025 has already proven to be quite a year from multiple angles.

Much of the discussion around inflation over the past few months has centred on the potential for US tariffs, a focus that has only intensified following Donald Trump’s inauguration.

One of the key reasons we see credit continuing to outperform government bonds over the medium term is corporate fundamentals.