Trump tariffs threaten European stock rally
market snapshot
Biodiversity: A year in review
Increasing resource use is the main driver of a triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Unfortunately, we as humans have failed to manage our global portfolio of assets sustainably. Estimates show that between 1992 and 2014, produced capital per person doubled, and human capital per person increased by about 13% globally; but […]
Trump, again
With the second Trump administration now a month old (not a short month!), I’m devoting this special issue to the new president’s plan of action and the implications for the markets. History For analogy to the present day, one must look to the nineteenth century. Trump’s House majority is the smallest since the Civil War, […]
European stocks soar on Ukraine peace hopes
Market snapshot
The Year of the Snake: Our outlook for China in 2025
What’s next for Chinese markets? As we mark the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year, and the Year of the Snake, investors are asking: what is next for Chinese equities? Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election was initially taken as positive news for US markets and negative for China; the MSCI China […]
How project finance fits into a trade finance strategy
Fast reading Project finance supports the underlying infrastructure that makes trade possible. Federated Hermes focuses on operational and expansionary infrastructure project financing, secured on infrastructure assets that generate steady cash flows. We invest in limited-tenor loans that fund well-established, large-scale projects in emerging as well as developed markets. Trade finance introduces third parties into the […]
China’s ‘Sputnik moment’
On 4 October, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite. The launch ushered in a new era of political, military, technological, and scientific developments, and started the US-USSR space race. On 20 January, Chinese technology start-up DeepSeek released two large language models (LLM), including DeepSeek-R1, a partly open-source large […]
We can live with this
The S&P 500 has been sideways for a while now, something often seen in the weeks after a presidential inauguration; only half of the names in the index currently trade above their 50-day moving average. For the market to exit this period of consolidation with any bullish conviction, that fraction will need to increase. The market […]
Italian banks in focus: Key takeaways from our engagement trip to Milan
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) – is it fit-for-purpose? Companies are racing to finalise their first CSRD-aligned disclosures. However, issuers across several sectors have told us that compliance is neither easy nor cheap; it requires significant upfront costs to establish the necessary IT systems, hire dedicated full-time equivalents (FTEs), and achieve a cultural shift […]
Everything you wanted to know about tariffs and trade finance
(but were afraid to ask)
