Market View - How Aim Is Keeping Its Focus

Recent turmoil in financial markets around the world has led to increasing uncertainty. There have been a series of headline-grabbing events. In particular, emerging problems in the US sub-prime mortgage market, the collapse of sizeable hedge funds and difficulty in raising debt by private equity consortia, have caused widespread volatility in credit and stock markets.

What’s most worrying is that the extent of losses linked to the sub-prime mortgage market is not completely known. It may be that supposedly very safe, highly rated, complex debt products are backed further down the leverage line by sub-prime mortgage debt. It is this degree of uncertainty, as opposed to risk, that has got the market worried.