The British Brief

Following Jerome Powell's speech at Jackson Hole, the S&P 500 rose 0.9%, as shown by the figure from the Financial Times below, and the Nasdaq rose 1.2% closing on an all-time high. The question then, is what did Jerome Powell say that made the markets react positively, continuing their climb to higher and higher highs. I am sorry to disappoint, but as boring as it may sound, there were no real fireworks to report from the Jackson Hole speech. However, Powell has given us an insight into the actions the Fed is likely to take over the coming months and years, giving the market some certainty about the future. We now know that the Fed has achieved the first of its two goals that it has set out to achieve before monetary tightening. The goal that has been achieved being average 2% inflation and the goal not yet achieved being the economy operating at full employment, though he indicated that there has been good progress in reaching full employment due to falling unemployment.   Al

Robinhood is an extremely popular brokerage app and the most popular platform for US retail investors. However, the company has put its European launch on hold, leaving a gap in the market for a low-cost trading platform to take hold of European retail investors.     Like the USA, retail trading is becoming increasingly popular in Europe due to zero-commission trading. The start-ups vying for dominance in the European market are Trade Republic in Germany, Freetrade in the UK, and Bux in the Netherlands. These start-ups have recently seen their active user base rapidly increase to between 400,000 and 600,000 and are now expanding throughout Europe to gain market dominance.    Brokerage apps are restructuring trading altogether, undercutting the high commissions European banks charge. Low-cost market access to thousands of shares, funds and cryptocurrencies is attracting millions of customers to these apps. However, regulatory scrutiny is growing in Europe after Robinhood faced US lawmak