The Nasdaq and some tech stocks in particular started to rise exponentially and in isolation from the rest of the market in August.

The summer break didn’t bring anything new: while the financial markets continued their relentless advance, the real economy continued to suffer in the aftermath of the pandemic. Poor macro data is disregarded due to the belief that central banks and governments will come to rescue again.

Never has been a reporting season anxiously awaited by the market participants, who were expecting companies to shed some light on what to expect for the next few quarters.

Since the beginning of the year, technology stocks are the clear winners (again), with all the remaining sectors lagging far behind.

Nowadays, the US markets are more reminiscent of the late '90s. In the previous issue, we spoke about the "new paradigm" used for evaluating shares, i.e.: looking at long term expected earnings potential and not the real numbers coming out each quarters.

Unchanged. Looking at just YTD performances, 2020 seems a very boring year, with all major indices and asset classes at, or just below.

Jacopo Turolla, Senior Portfolio Manager, AZ Life Azimut’s life insurance

The covid-19-induced recession is a very unusual one, not only because of how it started (a very rare instance of supply-demand shock), but also for the response to this crisis by policymakers.