Markets Gain as Confidence Returns

This is now the sixth Industry Watch, covering 18 months, where COVID-19 has been the main factor influencing market values and trends, both directly and indirectly.

The world is still a long way from normality, and until all countries have vaccinated the majority of their population, a return to pre-COVID life is not possible.

One problem – other than the virus itself – is that although the pandemic is global, the situation differs greatly from one country to another and so it is not easy to predict what will affect businesses and market sentiment next. This generally leads to turbulence rather than a trend, and we saw this in the first period of 2021 (see CN March 2021), where the fluctuations varied greatly by market and month.