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Yesterday, at their last meeting of the year, the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee voted by a margin of six-to-three to hold interest rates at 4.75%, as recent increases in wages and prices indicated inflation still persists. The hold on rates comes despite the BoE downgrading its prediction of growth prospects for the last…

US inflation increased to 2.7% in November according to figures released on Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics; inline with analyst expectations but higher than October’s figure of 2.6%. Markets are now indicating a more than 98% chance the Federal Reserve will cut rates by 0.25 percentage points at the meeting next week. However,…

UK house prices rose at the fastest pace in two years in November, amid strong wage growth and lower mortgage rates. According to figures released by Nationwide, average house prices rose 3.7% in the year to November, higher than analysts’ expectations of 2.2% following an increase of 2.4% in the year to October. Nationwide’s figures…

Donald Trump has pledged to impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico of 25%, and China an additional 10% on top of current levies from his first day in office, according to a post made on Truth Social, his own social media site. In reaction, the Canadian dollar fell 0.9% against the US dollar…

Official data released on Wednesday by the Office for National Statistics showed a sharp increase in UK inflation. The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 2.3% in the year to October 2024, up from 1.7% in September and above analyst expectations of 2.2% according to Reuters. The rise could be partly attributed to a 10%…

The UK economy grew just 0.1% in the last quarter according to data released by the Office for National Statistics. This was below economists’ expectations of 0.2%, and the previous quarter’s rise of 0.5%. The services sector, which accounts for circa 80% of the economy, expanded just 0.1% compared to 0.6% in the previous quarter.…

Naturally, the big news of the week was Donald Trump’s historic victory in the US presidential election, which saw US stocks hit record highs. The S&P rose 2.5% on the day, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 2.7%. It was technology and financial stocks that rose the most off the back of hopes of further deregulation in…

In official data released on Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics, UK wage growth (excluding bonuses) was shown to have fallen to 4.9% in the three months to August, in line with analyst expectations. This is compared to 5.1% in the three months to July. Including bonuses, the latest figure was lower at 3.8%,…

Data released on Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed US inflation fell to 2.4% in September, below the August figure of 2.5%, but above analyst expectations of 2.3%. However, the continued easing of inflation has reinforced expectations of a quarter percentage point rate cut by the Federal Reserve in November, with markets pricing…