As Christmas approaches, US President Donald Trump has played the Grinch to US Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell’s Santa Claus. Chief investment officer Julian Chillingworth thinks investors are getting too riled about 2019 growth, but their soured mood could linger.

They used to call David Coombs crazy. When he set up our multi-asset funds 10 years ago, many people didn’t get why we were setting targets for return and risk that investors could hold us to.

Our head of multi-asset investments, David Coombs, gazes into his crystal ball as he prepares for 2018

Our head of multi-asset investments, David Coombs, gazes into his crystal ball as he prepares for 2019.

Our head of multi-asset investments, David Coombs, consults the tea leaves as he prepares for a new decade.

Well, 2020 didn’t go the way we all expected. Our head of multi-asset investments, David Coombs, has tossed out his old fortune-telling teacup and reached for the magic 8-ball this year.

You’d think that two years of pandemic-induced uncertainty would persuade David Coombs to stop trying to predict the future, yet here we are. Our head of multi-assets gives his lucky dice another blow…

After a pretty questionable effort at predicting 2022, our head of multi-asset investments, David Coombs, dusts himself off and leaps into 2023.

Work intrudes on head of multi-asset investments David Coombs’s vacation time as Silicon Valley Bank collapses. He marvels at just how fast information – and misinformation – can spread and suggests social media may be a risk to financial stability.

After a busy start to the year there’s still a lot of uncertainty swirling around in markets. But economies tend to bounce back hard after sombre periods, and hope remains that our eventual return to ‘normal’ will be no different.

Companies selling big global brands have come to be known as ‘dividend aristocrats’ because of their long track records of stable earnings power. Rathbones’ head of equity research Sanjiv Tumkur discusses how these ‘branded gentry’ are under threat in a rapidly changing consumer landscape, and how some are adapting.

Lockdown was much different back in the 1970s – we didn’t even know we were in lockdown. Our head of fixed income Bryn Jones thinks we’ve come a long way over his lifetime.