Quarterly Market Round-up
Flash Stats - Q2 2022
08 Jul 2022 - Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
In our regular market round-up, we take a look at what's happened in Q2 2022.
It was another challenging quarter for investment markets, with soaring inflation and tighter financial conditions weighing on the economic outlook and giving rise to fears of recession. Equity and bond markets posted negative returns; compounding what was already a difficult start to the year.
Some of the headlines in Q2 2022 include:
- Consumer confidence surveys have plunged in the major
advanced economies as inflationary pressures and higher
borrowing costs squeeze consumer’s real incomes. The recent
partial easing in Chinese COVID restrictions may bring some
relief to strained supply chains, but corporates remain beset by
product and labour shortages. - As inflation forecasts continue to rise, global growth forecasts
remain on a downwards trend: June’s consensus forecasts global
GDP rising 2.9% in 2022 and 2.8% in 2023, down from 4.1% and
3.2%, respectively, at the start of the year. - Though remaining at a level consistent with modest expansion, developed market Purchasing Managers' Indices for June
showed a more rapid deterioration, adding to evidence of a slowing pace of growth. Global output rose, driven by an easing
of restrictions in China, but other major regions generally saw slower rates of expansion or even contraction. - While headline inflation continues to rise across developed markets, year-on-year US and UK core inflation, which excludes
volatile energy and food prices, eased slightly, but remained elevated, at 6.0% and 5.9%, respectively. US and UK inflation
pressures look more broad-based, owing in part to very tight labour markets, whereas a large proportion of eurozone inflation
still relates to volatile energy and food prices, with Eurozone core CPI increasing to 3.8% year-on-year. Inflation is expected
to remain elevated in the near-term and fall back more slowly than previously expected.
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