Gill Hutchison: Half-time report

Central bankers have returned to the limelight with a vengeance in the past week or so and, as the quarter drew to a close, markets were having to shift their perceptions about the speed of monetary policy changes. My planned title for this piece - ‘Has anyone seen the reflation trade?' - has become rather irrelevant for now. This year, equity market leadership has had a distinctly cautious feel - bond markets have been pretty chipper, the dollar has declined and commodities have been poor. Looking back, the so-called ‘Trump Bump' was a relatively transitory phase. In fact, the reflation...