GAM's Active Thinking 12 April 2024
With the peak of the 2024 proxy season soon approaching, Simona Rubino from GAM’s Governance & Responsible Investing (GRI) team shares her views on six themes that she sees as priorities for this year and are likely to shape the shareholder meetings agenda.
US stocks have been defying higher interest rates consistently since October 2022, rising by around 40%. At the same time, the US economy has accelerated even as inflation has been cooling. Either something is about to break, or a profound change could propel stocks onwards.
Latest from Charles Hepworth blog:
Stronger inflation data in the US both at the headline and core level for March is starting to be something of a regular feature (at least based on the last few months). US CPI in March rose by 0.4% at both core and headline, higher than the 0.3% expected, and means inflation on a yearly basis is now back up to 3.5% (from 3.2% last month)...
The European Central Bank (ECB) left their main refinancing rate at 4.5%, much as expected, and continued the mantra that ‘rates will remain sufficiently restrictive for as long as necessary’. There was no real reaction post the announcement but more interesting was the press conference where ECB President Christine Lagarde, when asked if a rate cut is to be expected in June, indicated without affirming that they will have a lot more data to help coalesce their view...
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