First Trust Global Portfolios Limited

Web: www.ftglobalportfolios.com/
Phone: +44 (0)203 195 7121

At a glance

39 Funds
122 Unit/Shares
543 Documents
0 Legal Announcements

Provider News

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: The 2021 Finish: Fast Growth, High Inflation

    25.01.2022 17:08 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: When fourth quarter GDP data is released later this week, it will show that 2021 finished on a high note. Unfortunately, the high note included not only strong economic growth but also rapid inflation. This shouldn’t be a surprise; it’s what you get when you mix a huge surge in government spending with very loose monetary policy. At present, we estimate that real GDP grew at a 5.7% annual rate in...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Who Gets the Blame for Inflation

    18.01.2022 19:11 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Consumer prices rose 7.0% in 2021, the largest increase for any calendar year since 1981. As a result, politicians across the political spectrum are working overtime to find someone to blame and attack. Some politicians on the left are blaming “greedy” businesses for inflation. But we find this explanation completely ridiculous. Of course, businesses are greedy, in the sense that they’re run by...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Job Market Making Progress

    17.01.2022 18:01 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Many analysts were disappointed by last Friday’s job report for December, but we think the headline masks an overall report that shows continued improvement in the labor market and a possible surge in small-business start-ups and entrepreneurship. Nonfarm payrolls rose 199,000 in December versus a consensus expected 450,000. Payroll growth was revised up a combined 141,000 in October and November,...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Welcome to 2022: The Winds of Change

    17.01.2022 18:00 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Welcome to 2022! We can’t imagine a more transformative year for America. After two years of unprecedented government actions, the winds of change are blowing hard. The economy has been buffeted by short-term factors since 2020; this year, long-term fundamentals should re-assert themselves as the most important drivers of economic and financial performance. First, the obvious: COVID and COVID-related...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Greedy Innkeeper or Generous Capitalist?

    17.01.2022 17:58 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: The Bible story of the virgin birth is at the center of much of the holiday cheer this time of year. The book of Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem because Caesar Augustus decreed a census should be taken. Mary gave birth after arriving in Bethlehem and placed baby Jesus in a manger because there was “no room for them in the inn.” Some people think Mary and Joseph were...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook:2022: Moderate GDP, Persistent Inflation

    17.01.2022 17:57 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: From 30,000 feet, the COVID lockdown and re-opening played out pretty much like we thought. GDP collapsed in the first half of 2020, then exploded in the third quarter, followed by strong, but erratic, quarterly growth ever since. The fourth quarter data, when it’s released in January, will show 2021 had the fastest GDP growth, and highest inflation, since the 1980s. As a reminder, this is not a...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: S&P 5,250 – Dow 40,000

    17.01.2022 17:56 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: We were bullish in 2021 and bullishness obviously paid off. As of the Friday close, the S&P 500 is up more than 25% so far this year. Meanwhile, a 10-year Treasury Note purchased at the end of 2020 has generated a negative total return, as interest earnings have been more than offset by capital losses. The reason we were bullish a year ago even amid widespread fears about COVID-19, is because we...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Volatility and Fear

    17.01.2022 17:55 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: At the close on Friday, the NASDAQ Composite Index was down 6.1% and the S&P 500 was down 3.5%, from their recent all-time record highs. The 10-year Treasury yield, which was 1.67% as recently as the week of Thanksgiving, was yielding 1.35% at the close on Friday. Oil prices have fallen about 22% from their highs and Bitcoin was down about 28% over this past weekend. Some investors are worried about...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Riding the COVID Rollercoaster

    30.11.2021 12:46 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: On Friday, news of a COVID-19 variant identified in South Africa, and the announcement of new travel restrictions, sent markets reeling. This is obviously not the only variant, and it won’t be the last, either. In our opinion, it’s not the new variant that is the problem, but the government’s potential reaction to it. Oil prices fell 13% on Friday, pricing in a potential new round of lockdowns. ...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Inflation Returns

    16.11.2021 11:07 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Inflation Returns Inflation is back and worse than it’s been in decades. Consumer prices rose 0.9% in October and are up 6.2% in the last twelve months. Two more months of moderate increases, and the CPI will be 6.5% in 2021, the highest inflation since 1982. As a result, after surging in the earliest stages of the pandemic, “real” (inflation-adjusted) average hourly wages have been trending...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Tuesday Results and the 2022 Economic Outlook

    09.11.2021 18:25 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: In spite of what listening to the mainstream media might make you think, the voting public doesn’t change much from year to year or election to election. As a result, when leaders try to take policy too far in one direction, without enough public support, they often get punished at the polls. That’s our takeaway from the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial and down-ballot state legislative elections...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Eyes on the Fed

    02.11.2021 18:15 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Investors will be focused on the Federal Reserve this week and our expectations is that it will finally announce an overdue tapering of quantitative easing. In addition, we expect Chairman Jerome Powell to make it clear in the press conference that he expects tapering to be completed by mid-2022. Inflation is clearly a problem. The CPI is up 5.4% from a year ago. When October data arrive the...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Slower Growth in Q3

    26.10.2021 10:55 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Keynesianism can temporarily giveth, but ultimately always taketh away…and then some. When the US fell into the COVID crisis, the federal government went on a massive spending binge. Pre-COVID, in the twelve months through March 2020, federal outlays were $4.6 trillion, or 21.4% of GDP. In the next twelve months outlays soared to $7.6 trillion, or 36.2% of GDP. Outside of wartime, we know of no...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Respect Millennials

    19.10.2021 18:27 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Politics today is in large part about pitting one group against another and convincing one side they’ve been treated unfairly. One of those groups is the younger generation of workers known as Millennials, who are supposedly up to their eyeballs in debt and lagging well behind prior generations. Before we get into it, let’s define who we’re talking about: • Millennials (born 1981-96) • Generation...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Focus on Data, Not Spin

    12.10.2021 13:30 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: In 2009, after overly strict mark-to-market accounting rules were altered, we said the Financial Crisis was over. It was hard to get our voice heard, though, because both sides of the political aisle were busy saying the economy stunk. Political liberals tried to use the crisis to grow the government and increase bank regulation. Political conservatives said it was a “sugar high” and that President...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: The Cost of Lockdowns

    12.10.2021 10:26 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Last March, when the government was considering whether to lockdown the economy, we argued that the longer we stayed locked down the more permanent the damage we would do to the underlying economy. It is now clear that the cost of the lockdowns is immense. We aren’t just talking about the $5 trillion in government borrowing from future generations, but the clear damage done to small businesses and...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Less Government, More Employment

    12.10.2021 10:25 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Usually, the most important economic data report every month is the Employment Report and usually that key report comes out the first Friday of every month. But this month is throwing one of those periodic knuckleballs and so we need to wait an extra week, until Friday October 8. Nothing strange is really going on, and there’s no reason for conspiracy-thinking. Both the payroll report and the...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Resist Inflation Complacency

    23.09.2021 18:58 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: Some analysts and investors breathed a big sigh of relief on inflation when it was reported last week that the Consumer Price Index rose 0.3% in August versus a consensus expected 0.4%. But we think any sense of relief is premature. First, in no way, shape, or form, is a 0.3% increase in consumer prices indicative of low inflation. Consumer prices rose at a 3.3% annual rate in August, which is still...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Stocks Versus the Economy

    14.09.2021 15:12 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: If you’ve read our two most recent Monday Morning Outlooks, you know we raised our forecast for the S&P 500, but lowered our forecast for real GDP growth. How can that be? The first thing to recognize is that when we say we’re bullish on stocks that doesn’t mean we think the stock market is going to go up every day, every week, or even every month. It won’t. Nor does it exclude the possibility of...

  • Brian Wesbury Weekly Outlook: Can the US “Fully Recover”?

    14.09.2021 15:11 - First Trust Global Portfolios Limited: In early 2020, when COVID hit, the unemployment rate in the United States was 3.5%, wages for low-income earners were rising faster than wages for high-income earners, living standards were rising…the economy was on a roll. Then, because scientists said lockdowns would stop COVID, they turned the light switch off. Real GDP fell at a 5.1% annual rate in the first quarter of 2020 and then an annualized...