UK rate rise: ‘one and done’ or beginning of rate hiking cycle?
It has been an eventful start to November, following a full-on October that generated pleasing returns for investors in global capital markets (see table above). The financially interested UK public will have focused on the first interest rate rise in the UK for more than a decade – by 0.25%. Two weeks ago, we had covered the UK’s developing inflation and interest rate dynamics in our second article and strongly suggested that this 0.25% rate rise would happen this week. Our readers will therefore have been as unsurprised as markets were and so the little market reaction there was to the announcement by the Bank of England (BoE) on Thursday was actually a small but still counter intuitive decline in short term yields and £-Sterling.
Eurozone: on the periphery or in the game?
With the Catalan drama currently dominating the headlines, one could be forgiven for thinking that things are once again going pear-shaped on the continent. Indeed, when reading the press here, it often seems like crisis is always just around the corner in the EU. Fortunately for investors, markets apparently didn’t get the memo about doom in the Eurozone (EZ). Instead, European assets continued full steam ahead with their recent momentum this week.
Abenomics revitalised
Shinzo Abe was re-elected Japan’s Prime Minister by its parliament on Wednesday, after his coalition’s big victory in last month’s election. The ruling bloc, led by Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, retained its “super majority” of two thirds of seats in the country’s legislature, meaning Mr Abe has the ability to change the country’s pacifist post-war constitution.
Butter shortages and metals prices linked by cobwebs?
How do butter shortages in France, surging prices for metals, a changing diet in China, Russian sanctions, synchronous improvements in global growth and rising optimism among commodity firms all link together?
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