Global headlines over the quarter centred around Russia’s annexure of the Crimea, the hunt for flight MH370 and the extreme US winter weather conditions, rather than on the benign investment markets.
However, the slowdown in US Quantitative Easing (QE) and the potential for US interest rate rises is never far from the front pages with the Federal Reserve indicating that, subject to continued improvement in economic data, the QE bond buyback programme could be completely curtailed by the end of the year with potential interest rate rises a further six months behind. The US labour market shows continued signs of recovery with the fall in unemployment now due to the creation of jobs, rather than from people dropping out of the workforce.