The charts that matter: growth stocks continue their slide

Welcome back. 

This week, we’re delving into the world of fintech – financial technology. We’re all much more comfortable living our financial lives via apps on our smartphones. And we’re not the only ones. Fintech is growing rapidly around the world, and especially in emerging markets where the “legacy” financial institutions didn’t get so much of a grip on life as in the developed world. Many companies will reap the rewards, while others will go to the wall, and Matthew Partridge picks the ones that should thrive. 

Elsewhere, David Stevenson poses five questions for fund investors to ask themselves this year, while Max King picks a couple of dozen bargain investment trusts for your consideration. Find out what they are in this week’ s issue of the magazine –  if you’re not already a subscriber, sign up here and get your first six issues free. 

Merryn’s guests on the podcast this week are Ian Lance and Nick Purves who between them manage the Temple Bar investment trust. They explain how their approach to value investing means that when they buy a business, they often get profitable divisions that have been discounted by the wider market “thrown in for free”.  Listen to what they have to say here. 

Here are the links for this week’s editions of Money Morning and other web articles you may have missed:

• Monday Money Morning: What can the “January barometer” tell us about 2022 stockmarket prospects?
• Web article: The best low cost index funds for 2022
• Tuesday Money Morning: The booming jobs market points to inflation lasting for longer
• Merryn’s blog: Energy prices will keep rising – here’s how to invest
• Wednesday Money Morning: Bitcoin’s new year is off to a bad start – what does the rest of 2022 hold?
• Thursday Money Morning: US inflation is at its highest since 1982. Why aren’t markets panicking?
• Friday Money Morning: How to be better at selling stocks
• Cryptocurrency roundup: Cryptocurrency roundup: bitcoin continues to slide as Lords say no need for a digital pound

Now for the charts of the week. 

The charts that matter 

Gold climbed back up after the previous week’s fall. 

(Gold: three months)

The US dollar index (DXY – a measure of the strength of the dollar against a basket of the currencies of its major trading partners) fell hard as inflation in America hit its highest since 1982.

(DXY: three months)

The Chinese yuan (or renminbi) continued to trade sideways (when the red line is rising, the dollar is strengthening while the yuan is weakening). 

(Chinese yuan to the US dollar: since 25 Jun 2019)

The yield on the ten-year US government bond fell back after last week’s sharp rise.

(Ten-year US Treasury yield: three months)

The yield on the Japanese ten-year bond did the same.

(Ten-year Japanese government bond yield: three months)

And the yield on the ten-year German Bund – after almost hitting positive territory – fell back, too.

(Ten-year Bund yield: three months)

Copper bounced back strongly.

(Copper: nine months)

And the closely-related Aussie dollar turned up, too.

(Aussie dollar vs US dollar exchange rate: three months)

Bitcoin saw no real respite in its decline.

(Bitcoin: three months)

US weekly initial jobless claims rose by 23,000 to 230,000. The four-week moving average rose by 6,250 to 210,750. 

(US initial jobless claims, four-week moving average: since Jan 2020)

The oil price surged higher.

(Brent crude oil: three months)

Amazon had another bad week as the tech-heavy Nasdaq index sold off again.

(Amazon: three months)

And Tesla saw a similar decline.

(Tesla: three months)

Have a great weekend.