Is coronavirus uncertainty now priced into UK equities?

clock • 2 min read

With the UK facing the prospect of the sharpest drop in economic activity for more than 300 years, now seems a challenging time to be searching for growth.

GDP is of course a lagging indicator, however, and the real question for investors is how much is already in the price. On this basis, there is cause for some optimism. The UK market currently trades on a cyclically-adjusted P/E ratio of about 13x, less than half that of the US at roughly 27x. The main issue for markets, of course, remains the nature of the continued spread of Covid-19. So far, the country has seen a stubbornly high rate of new case growth relative to other European nations, but we may have already seen the peak as lockdown measures begin to ease. Triple Point'...

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