As 2024 progresses, so too does financial market confidence improve, such that some asset prices have been increasingly robust.  Buoyant enthusiasm is welcome but seems at odds with some of the more pressing issues of the world.

A sense of relief has positively influenced global investment markets. Hitherto rampant inflation is abating, interest rates have mostly stopped rising (and might even fall), and that widely predicted looming recession has remained a mirage.

The global financial market valuation landscape has been contending with the negative effects of rising interest rates, caused in turn by stubborn consumer and producer inflation and increasingly expensive debt refinancing.