Welcome to Thoughts in the Market.

I'm Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross-Asset Stragist for Morgan Stanley.

Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about trends

across the global investment landscape and how we put those ideas together.

It's Friday, July 9th at 2 p.m. in London.

What's driving the market?

As global stocks have moved higher, there's a natural desire to pinpoint what exactly

is the main driver of that strength.

A pretty common explanation is that it's down to the amount of cash being pushed into

markets from both central banks and investors.

Yet while these flows are very large and important, there's a problem with the idea that

they're the main driver of the market.

To be clear, central bank support is aggressive.

Globally, central banks have purchased over $4 trillion of assets over the last 12 months.

That's injected large amounts of money into the financial system and also helped keep

bond yields low, both of which would seem to make stocks and other assets more attractive

by comparison.

And central banks aren't the only ones in on this trend.

Investors have pushed record amounts of money into the stock market in recent months via

exchange traded funds or ETFs.

These aren't necessarily flows in the small speculative stocks, but rather flows in a large

established equity indices.

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