The market’s eyes were fixed on the US non-farm payrolls report last week, which provided an important snapshot of the US labour market ahead of the Fed’s September policy meeting.

NVIDIA’s sales soared 56% for the quarter, reaching an impressive $46.74 billion. Despite this strong performance, the stock dipped on Thursday as investors weighed the latest earnings report.

Global equities shrugged off US recession fears last week as significant gains were made across the developed markets.

Last month global equities showed impressive resilience, recovering some of the ground lost earlier in the year in local currency terms.

In May, markets continued their recovery from April’s lows as consumer sentiment improved and trade tensions eased.

In April, markets were highly volatile, largely due to US President Trump’s Liberation Day announcement regarding global trade tariffs, which caused steep declines worldwide early in the month.

The Zurich Investment Outlook is produced twice yearly by the team at Zurich Investments, based in Dublin, Ireland. This publication provides an in-depth insight into our current thinking and positioning, and expands on the reasons behind our economic views to our clients and customers.

As we enter 2025, we look to maintain perspective and to balance the risks across respective asset classes.

As we enter 2024, we have a broadly balanced asset allocation stance, namely a neutral weighting in equities and a much-increased weighting in bonds. This follows a steady reduction in equity exposure throughout the last quarter of 2023.