Despite it being more than 10 years since the global financial crisis (GFC), the world remains heavily indebted and there is no realistic prospect of that debt reducing in the short or medium term. Barring glaring historical exceptions, sovereign debt levels in many economies are close to all-time highs...

Timing CTAs is notoriously challenging. Monitoring their exposures provides a useful picture but has rarely been a reliable allocation method. They enjoyed an impressive rally this year, mainly supported by their long bond positions, which fueled high CTAs returns' auto-correlations.

It appears that a German fiscal stimulus is not imminent and that these effects would take time to materialize. Maintaining a budget surplus target while the Eurosystem will start buying German bonds again from November will maintain downward pressure on German long-term interest rates.

A spectacular momentum crash unfolded since late August, caused by the bounce back in sovereign bond yields. Within equity markets, value stocks experienced an impressive rebound while momentum stocks fell strikingly.

Despite colossal headwinds related to trade tensions, the Brexit deadlock and the manufacturing recession, asset prices have been incredibly buoyant so far this year. Equities are recovering from the August drawdown and are approaching late-July record levels.