Expert opinion

FinLantern and MGF have announced a strategic partnership in the organization of events in Europe for selected investors and asset managers

The STOXX Supersector Europe 600 Banks Index, has been in the last ten years, the worst performer index among he 19 European Supersectors group. Since January 2007 it had performed -63,23%.

In the last ten years this Supersector developed three intermediate uptrends, and the las one started one year ago. Looking to the weekly chart from 2006, we can note a first short but strong uptrend in 2009 (1), a second longer uptrend in the period 2012-2015 (2), and a last one started in mid 2016 (3).

The US private sector created less than expected jobs last month, suggesting that job creation started to cool after strong gains registered earlier. The ADP National Employment Report released on Thursday showed companies added 158K new jobs to the economy in June, following the preceding month’s downwardly revised figure of 230K and surpassing analysts’ expectations for an 185K increase.

MarketPlus went in search of the Swiss incubators for startups. Here is the first, Kickstart Accelerators, working in the field of FinTech, Food, Smart Cities, Robotics & Intelligent Systems, EdTech and Healthcare. Patricia Schlenter, Program Manager, explained us how it works.

«Kickstart Accelerator invites 50 startups from all over the world for 11 weeks to Switzerland where they are provided with coworking space, seed funding as well as direct access to leading corporate partners, investors and experts. Moreover, they get a chance to win up to 25`000 CHF of grants. Throughout the program, the startup founders join well-structured workshops and receive high-quality mentoring. Moreover, Kickstart Accelerator provides startups with the possibility of attaining a proof of concept with one of the corporate partners.

Technology and the solutions it can offer to the world of finance were among the hottest topics at FinDating. The event, which took place in Geneva on June 22nd, introduced a few new concepts with the keynote speakers who were invited. Among them, Kim-Andrée Potvin opened with a recounting of the experience of BNP Paribas in tackling technological and digital new challenges.

Pavlos Christoforou, cofounder and partner at PointNine, explained «The regulatory challenge: Lessons learned after one billion trades processed», and regulation was again the topic touched by Yana Afanasieva, of Swiss Finance + Technology Association. Giacomo Zucco – BlockchainLab – went then in depth talking about blockchain technology.

What do you think of when you hear the words ‘sustainability’ or ‘being green’? Does it conjure images of long-haired hippy-types wearing brown sandals and hugging trees? Saving polar bears? Or recycling Coke cans and yoghurt pots? Environmental issues are often misunderstood and seen as someone else’s problem. Worse, they are even ignored and considered to be irrelevant to modern business.

Since reflation trades topped out between December and February, Cyclical sectors and Financials have underperformed. During this period, growth stocks and especially Big Technology have widely outperformed, followed by Consumer Discretionary, also a growth sector, as well as Defensive sectors (Staples, Healthcare, Utilities). We believe that these rotations should reverse during the Summer, as Growth and Defensives handover to Financials and Cyclical and give life to a second leg up for reflation assets towards early 2018.

The US economy expanded at a stronger-than-initially-expected pace in the March quarter amid higher consumer spending. The Commerce Department reported on Thursday that the domestic economy grew at an annualised pace of 1.4% in the Q1 of 2017, following the preceding quarter’s expansion of 2.1% and surpassing the prior estimate of 1.2% growth.