Netflix announced that it has an impressive 125m subscribers in total and revenue growth of 40 per cent, the fastest quarterly year-on-year increase it has posted since introducing its online streaming service. So, the technology rally is far from over. It seems that what goes around does indeed come around.
On this side of the Atlantic, things have not changed that much since the EU referendum in June 2016.
Source: FE Analytics
The main UK equity benchmark, the FTSE 100 index, is full of commodity-related names which have benefited from the surge in oil prices this year. Meanwhile, a strengthening US dollar has helped commodities, as they are all priced in the reserve currency.
The oil price was further helped by soaring US supplies and concerns that the US would scrap the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose heavy sanctions on the Opec member.
With the rise of commodity prices and the US dollar, mid-cap managers might have been expected to suffer this year.
This has not been the case, with the UK mid-cap FTSE 250 index continuing to outperform the large-cap FTSE 100.
The mid-cap benchmark has risen by 3.34 per cent in 2018, outperforming the FTSE 100 index by 1.3 per cent, as such, it has now fully reversed its losses from the Brexit vote.
The strong performance of the FTSE 250 has been driven by strong corporate activity this year. For example, the best performance came from Ocado. Its share price rose by 45 per cent after the online retailer reached an agreement with Kroger, the second-biggest food retailer in the US.
The lesson is: never give up on the mid-caps.
Charles Younes is research manager of FE
