El Niño may topple bonds

Surprisingly, the El Niño weather phenomenon is often good for global growth, says John Stepek. And that means trouble for bonds.

There's been a lot in the press recently on how the climate impacts on investing. The world's wealthiest nations this week agreed to phase out fossil fuel emissions this century (the "how" part was left vague), while Norway's vast sovereign wealth fund is pulling out of coal-dependent businesses. Our long-held view is that it's hard to predict the effects of climate change itself but if governments are bent on making rules and spending taxpayers' money to combat it, it's worth paying attention to the opportunities and threats created.

But another weather event could have a much more immediate impact on your portfolio El Nio. I'm no meteorologist, so forgive me for keeping this basic El Nio is a weather phenomenon involving prolonged warming of parts of the Pacific. This has the knock-on effect of causing all sorts of unusual and extreme weather across the world. It looks likely that we'll see a particularly severe El Nio this year, reckons the Australian Bureau of Meterology.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.