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Artificial intelligence and the search for company profits
Last Updated: October 3, 2025
The launch of ChatGPT has triggered a new artificial intelligence (AI) gold rush among investors. This search for riches has driven strong gains this year across the technology sector — from chip makers (the picks and shovels of this new gold rush) to large cloud-computing service providers, software vendors and IT consultants. But it’s far from clear how it will all pan out.
Investment Insights Q4 2023: Shaky ground
Last Updated: October 3, 2025
Why investing in UK property is not always as safe as houses.
Investment Insights Q1 2024: The Magnificent Seven
Last Updated: October 3, 2025
“Dashing superheroes rescue distressed equity investors from the perils of rising interest rates” could be the headline for last year’s lopsided stock market action. Dubbed the Magnificent Seven, a small group of companies — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta and Tesla — contributed more than half of the gain in the S&P 500 in 2023 (figure 1). Will they continue to be such a key determinant of performance for charities with global equity exposure in 2024?
Investment Insights Q4 2023: AI industrial revolution?
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
Major new technologies often result in investors over-extrapolating: think of radio stocks in the 1920s, or internet stocks in the late 90s. Or even the dominance of miners and oil producers in 2010 as globalisation — which is technological in a sense — was touted as never-ending. The history of artificial intelligence (AI) is filled with predictions that now seem absurd: pioneering computer scientist Herbert Simon said that by 1985 a computer would be as capable as the human brain.
Dancing, Drama and Democracy
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
Discover how proxy voting and AGM attendance empower Rathbones to influence corporate behaviour, drive ESG change, and uphold shareholder democracy.
The shift to clean energy and its impact on our biodiversity
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
In late October 2023, the UK government backed calls for a global moratorium on deep-sea mining over concerns about its impact on the environment, after dozens of British scientists signed a letter entreating Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to do so.
Japanese equities are coming into the light
Last Updated: October 3, 2025
Foreign investors have long regarded the Japanese stock market as akin to a samurai defeated in battle, sitting in his crumbling castle and ruminating on the bittersweet memory of his glory years. Granted, Japan’s Topix stock index has never returned to the stratospheric level of close to 2,900 reached in 1989, shortly before the market bubble burst. However, it has surged this year to a 33-year high, helped by increasing interest from overseas investors. We think this interest is justified for several reasons, and still see a lot of potential for Japanese companies.
Investment Insights Q3 2024: Bond markets can be forgiving (sometimes)
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
As Rachel Reeves moves into Number 11 Downing Street, where the Chancellor lives and works, she faces a fiscal conundrum. Her party’s manifesto pledged “no return to austerity”, yet she is inheriting plans containing significant spending cuts, and her room for manoeuvre is limited. She’s pledged not to increase the four taxes that raise most revenue, and to retain fiscal rules that limit her scope to borrow. Squaring this circle won’t be easy. However, the situation is better than the gloomier prognoses suggest, and we’re still happy holding UK government bonds.
Investment update: an election to snap the uk out of its funk?
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
With Prime Minister Rishi Sunak having announced a general election for Thursday 4 July, the Conservative Party has a mountain to climb to avoid a heavy defeat. Labour has a large lead in the polls (around 20 percentage points) that has been sustained for more than a year and a half. The polls can of course be wrong, or shift – but usually only by so much. It would take a historic swing in such a short time to make a big difference to the outcome.
Investment Insights Q4 2023: Higher for longer
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
The world has changed profoundly since the late 2010s, and the opportunities available to us as investors along with it. The strategies that serve us well today will look different to those that worked best in the unusual low-rate, low-volatility environment of the last decade.
Review of the week: Yields up, pound down
Last Updated: October 5, 2025
UK government bonds are under pressure, sending borrowing costs rocketing once again. But it’s not only Britain that’s affected, and it mostly stems from across the Atlantic.
Investment Insights Q2 2025: Europe's Big Reset
Last Updated: July 21, 2025
In the opening months of President Trump’s second term, attention-grabbing trade policy and a dramatic pivot on Ukraine have ratcheted up the level of uncertainty investors are facing. Our lead article considers the ‘collateral improvement’ this has brought to Europe’s outlook for growth.