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The Mearns & Company Monday Espresso is your essential five-minute investment briefing, equipping you with everything you need to know for the week ahead. Marlborough's Multi-Asset Solutions Investment Team summarise market events over the past seven days and preview the key events in the week ahead, while also sharing their expert insights.
Monday Espresso podcast - 9th March 2026
[00:00:00] Nathan Sweeney: Good morning everybody. It is Monday the 9th of March, 2026.
[00:00:04] Nathan Sweeney: Welcome to the Monday Espresso Podcast. I'm Nathan Sweeney, CIO of multi-asset here at the Marlborough Group, and today I'm really lucky to be joined by James Millward, I nvestment Analyst here at Marlborough covering UK and Europe.
[00:00:16] Nathan Sweeney: Good morning, James.
[00:00:17] James Milward: Good morning, Nathan.
[00:00:19] Nathan Sweeney: So James, bit of a, different week for markets, a big focus on geopolitical risk and obviously big moves in the oil price. so yes, what was happening, week?
[00:00:29] James Milward: Well Nathan, it was a classic risk off week. When the news gets heavy, the market gets defensive.
[00:00:34] Nathan Sweeney: Yeah. And I think that's a kind of an interesting theme for the market, it really is that defensive positioning.
[00:00:39] Nathan Sweeney: And, I think we obviously have to begin by talking about the, big headline of
the week. And this was the joint, military exercise by the US and Israel, striking targets, within Iran.
[00:00:52] Nathan Sweeney: So what I wanna do is really focus on, how the market thinks about this because we have fielded a lot of questions from clients. And, ultimately what the market is trying to do, whenever there's a geopolitical event like this, it's trying to assess what the impact will be on the global economy. So what you tend to get initially is a pullback in markets. So markets will initially react because what they want to do is get some time to understand actually what will be the economic impact.
[00:01:23] Nathan Sweeney: And whenever you have, events like this in the Middle East, the thing that the market will focus on is the energy price, because ultimately the market wants to know is, is there a recession on the horizon?
[00:01:37] Nathan Sweeney: And there's three reasons that you generally get a recession.
[00:01:41] Nathan Sweeney: So the market wants to understand, could this event trigger recession? And generally recessions are caused by financial shocks. Think, when money is flowing through the system, if that slows in any way, that can create a shock in the system, so think the financial crisis.
[00:01:56] Nathan Sweeney: Second is policy shock, and this is when central banks are increasing interest rates too quickly and that can slow growth too much could create a recession.
[00:02:04] Nathan Sweeney: And then lastly is the one which we're seeing today, and this is an energy shock.
[00:02:10] Nathan Sweeney: Oil prices have recently pushed through a hundred dollars per barrel mark, which naturally raises questions about the potential impact on the global economy. Now if we look at history, oil prices typically need to rise above $150 and remain there for a sustained period before they start to have a meaningful drag on economic growth.
[00:02:30] Nathan Sweeney: Now, importantly, policymakers are really unlikely to sit on their hands if prices continue to rise. We're already seeing discussions among G7 countries about the potential release of strategic oil reserves, which are specifically designed to stabilise markets during supply shocks.
[00:02:49] Nathan Sweeney: At the same time, central banks could also respond by cutting interest rates more aggressively if higher energy prices begin to weigh on economic activity.
[00:02:59] Nathan Sweeney: And it's also worth remembering that de-escalation in geopolitical events can happen just as quickly as escalations and oil prices can fall as rapidly as they rise once tensions, ease.
[00:03:12] Nathan Sweeney: So while the move in the oil price is clearly something markets are watching closely at this stage, we do not see this as signaling an imminent recession.
[00:03:22] Nathan Sweeney: I'm conscious that the market's focus is on oil is on the Middle East and what's happening. There are other events that the market is keeping, its eye on too and James, we did see, the release of unemployment data coming out in the US. So was there anything, of note in that data or anything that investors should be watching out for?
[00:03:44] James Milward: So job status was a bit weak, which doesn't help steady investor nerves, unemployment came in slightly softer at 4.4%. So we'll have to see what happens there but yeah, we'll, keep an eye on that and let you know if there's anything further to update
[00:03:56] Nathan Sweeney: Yeah as you quite rightly point out, it's a little bit softer on the jobs data, but not material. I think, you know, markets are on edge generally, you will see markets kind of reacting to data, particularly if it's a little bit negative.
[00:04:08] Nathan Sweeney: Now I know that, oil has been grabbing the headlines, but the tech sector is again, is having its own drama of late, and we did see AMD, which is a company involved in, chip manufacturing.
[00:04:20] Nathan Sweeney: We did see their share price surge, during the week, as they signed a deal with Meta, so if you don't know, meta is part of the Facebook family of apps, so what are we seeing happening on that side?
[00:04:32] James Milward: So, yeah, I think the lesson here really, Nathan, is that these AI monoliths is really breaking up.
[00:04:37] James Milward: So in 2024 and 2025, you could just buy tech and you'd win, now the market's getting a bit picky.
[00:04:44] James Milward: We are seeing a shift from building AI to using it, so companies like Meta are looking for cheaper, more efficient ways to run their systems, which is why AMD is catching up.
[00:04:53] James Milward: For retail investors it means that you can't just sit and forget about it now, you really need to sort of think about what you're investing in, whether your portfolio's exposed to the right, stocks to get exposures to tech.
[00:05:05] Nathan Sweeney: Yeah and I think that's a great point, so a lot of people will have kind of on blanket, you know, mag seven thought of that group of companies or the big companies or big tech companies in the US and what we're really seeing now happening is the market is starting to distinguish between the companies it likes and the companies it doesn't like and you're seeing bigger moves in share prices as a result. So yeah, that's a very interesting observation.
[00:05:27] Nathan Sweeney: What about the week ahead? Is there anything that we should be looking out?
[00:05:30] James Milward: So three dates to circle Nathan. So the first is Wednesday, the 11th of March, and that is US CPI. So now that we've got the jobs data in, we can get a clearer picture of what the Fed's going to do, when the CPI data comes in next Wednesday, which will be re really interesting to see and I agree with you that there will be, continued sort of volatility in markets due to oil, so that's also something we need to watch throughout the week.
[00:05:52] James Milward: Secondly in the UK, GDP data's out, so that will be watched closely by investors to see how the UK economy is doing. So the economic conditions in the UK has got a bit softer over the last few months, so that's definitely something we need to look at and that will, again, feed into the, BOEs decision to cut rates, in March or April as well.
[00:06:12] James Milward: And then third, we've got, Friday, is the US retail sales and this tells us whether the American consumer is still spending, despite Middle East tensions and higher energy prices.
[00:06:22] Nathan Sweeney: Okay, thank you, James and, you know, is insightful as always, and I appreciate for our listeners, this can be unsettling times, but ultimately, the market is always trying to assess what's happening in a very technical way, and from our perspective, we will continue to observe that and, give you updates accordingly.
[00:06:38] Nathan Sweeney: But as always, any questions do send them in, we'll bring them up on the podcast or any of our other mediums that, we share such as the chart of the week, et cetera. but have a great week everybody.