By: Sourajit Aiyer
Indian businesses are going international, but Chinese companies are beating them in cracking new opportunities. Nowhere is this more etched than in sectors which require significant long-term funding – like infrastructure and engineering.
As shoppers search for the latest bargains on UK high streets and online, Chancellor George Osborne could be forgiven for believing he really is the artisan of a strong UK recovery.
The year that is about to end was a good one for the UK, judging by some data: low inflation, low interest rates, high employment, rising house prices and a growing gross domestic product – what’s not to like?
But 2014 could turn out to be the year when the recovery ends. Other sets of data reveal the worrying signs of an economy that is running on hopes and dreams, rather than real investment.
With central banks remaining in easy monetary policy mode and with signs of a recovery – most notably in the US and the UK but also to some extent in the eurozone – visible, analysts have been betting on stocks rather than bonds, at least until the end of the year.
Rotation between sectors is “extremely frequent” as investors try to get additional gains before the year-end by switching to underperforming sectors, strategists at Libra Investment Services said.
The sunny summer that started in July and lasted for about three months seems to have done wonders for the British economy.
A look at the UK’s third-quarter gross domestic product reveals that the sectors that grew the most, contributing to the healthy 0.8 percent quarter-on-quarter and 1.5% year-on-year expansion, are those that depend heavily on the weather.