Later today we have US payrolls which will be closely watched by all, particularly as Wednesday’s ADP National Employment Report came in at just 27,000 jobs, well under the 123 - 230k range that was anticipated. We will focus more on this on Monday once we have had time to sift through all the numbers.
In the meantime, we thought we would focus on another key date in the diary, World Oceans Day. On the 8th June every year, thousands of people mark the day by focussing on the importance of the oceans to our health and the health of the planet and what each of us can do to protect it. Not everyone lives close to the sea, so the impact of plastic pollution on the oceans is not immediately visible, but when you travel abroad and see beautiful beaches littered with plastic waste it does make for a depressing sight. To make things worse, the UK is one of the largest exporters of plastic waste with beaches in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia being amongst the unfortunate recipients.
Sir David Attenborough has done a lot to highlight the problem through the Blue Planet TV series, but we all need to do something positive if change is going to be made. So, with World Oceans Day in mind, we have chosen today to announce the launch of the Blue Ocean Bond Fund which we aim to have up and running in the third quarter of this year with 50% of the management fees going to support help clean up the oceans and encourage a more socially responsible attitude towards plastic pollution. Impact funds like this are currently few in number, particularly in the bond space, but we hope that by being one of the first to launch such a fund we can encourage investors to think beyond simply expected return. Individually we can only make a small difference, but if millions of people make a small change then that can make a very big difference indeed.