In April US equities returned -0.7%, global developed equites 0.9%, emerging markets 1.3%, US Treasuries 0.6%, global government bonds 3.3% and gold 5.3% – seemingly nothing out of the ordinary, but market moves over the month mask traumatic day-to-day volatility amidst chaotic US policy making and deepening uncertainty, as the US rewrites the global economic and geopolitical post-war order in extraordinary haste. The intra-month trading range of equity markets and gold was around 13% and longer dated US Treasury bond yields moved in a range of 50bps, while the VIX index of equity market volatility, the so-called fear index, rose sharply. Yet by month end equity and bond markets had retraced most of the steep losses earlier in the month, and gold had fallen sharply from its peak. Perhaps the most significant move came in the US dollar, which followed its 3.2% decline on a trade-weighted basis in March with a fall of 4.5% in April, taking its decline year-to-date to 8.3%.
