Over the last six years, companies have had to grapple with five major “uncertainty shocks”: First it was Brexit in 2016, followed by the U.S. presidential election, China-U.S. trade-tensions, the Covid-19 pandemic, and in 2022 the Ukraine war.
An uncertainty shock may coincide with a typical economic shock, as in the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted energy and food supplies and therefore raised their prices. But it doesn’t have to: The U.S. election created significant uncertainty for companies, even before it had any direct effect on the real economy.
Since the 2008 global financial crisis and subsequent European debt crisis, economic and policy uncertainty has been rising. It surged in 2016 and reached all-time highs in 2020 with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. It fell in 2021, as Covid-19 started to become endemic in many parts of the world, but has picked up again since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This can not happen just like this ‼️💯🤩
This.
Certainly no visible effects on the inexorable growth in their profits or of the bonuses of their executives