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We suspect that the latest political turmoil in the UK adds to the reasons to expect a renewed rise in the 10-year Gilt yield, weakness in the pound, and continued trouble for the FTSE 100. The market reaction to the resignation of Boris Johnson as Prime …
7th July 2022
This Rapid Response was sent to clients immediately after the news early on 7 th July that the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, planned to resign. The news that Boris Johnson plans to resign as UK Prime Minister later today may lead to fiscal policy being a …
Surveys of pricing intentions suggest that firms are confident of being able to both make recent price rises stick and to follow them up with further big increases over the next year. So the news that consumers have a slightly smaller savings buffer than …
1st July 2022
Households exercising more caution The more muted rise in unsecured borrowing in May suggests the cost of living crisis and recent plunge in consumer confidence are prompting households to exercise a bit more caution. That adds to reasons to think …
Households have a slightly smaller savings buffer The final Q1 GDP data leave households looking a bit more vulnerable to the big fall in real incomes that’s going to hit in Q2 and Q3. Although GDP and consumer spending won’t fall as far as real incomes, …
30th June 2022
Wage growth is a possible source of the “more persistent inflationary pressures” that the Bank of England has said would prompt it to act “forcefully” when raising interest rates. This Update highlights where to look for the early signs of either a …
29th June 2022
This week’s economic news didn’t appear to satisfy the criteria of “indications of more persistent inflationary pressures” that the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) said last week would prompt it to act “forcefully”. As a result, market interest rate …
24th June 2022
Cost of living crisis bites harder The fall in retail sales in May suggests that the decline in households’ real incomes from surging inflation is starting to hit consumer spending a bit harder. Even so, consumer spending appears to be softening rather …
We haven’t changed our forecast that the Bank of England will raise interest rates from 1.25% now to a peak of 3.00% by the middle of next year. But we do now think that a number of other central banks will raise interest rates faster and to higher levels …
23rd June 2022
Activity holding up better than expected The fact that the composite PMI didn’t fall in June means the economy could be holding up a little better than we and the Bank of England had feared. Beneath the headline numbers, the survey also suggests strong …
Weaker economy will limit the Chancellor’s ability to help households The larger-than-expected rise in public borrowing in May is an early blow for the government on a day when it is expected to lose two by-elections. What’s more, the combination of a …
Probably not “persistent” enough to seal the deal on a 50bps rate hike The further rise in CPI inflation from 9.0% in April to a new 40-year high of 9.1% in May won’t prevent the Bank of England from raising interest rates further, but it may encourage it …
22nd June 2022
By cutting GDP growth by about 0.3-0.4 percentage points (ppts) in Q2 and raising GDP growth by a similar amount in Q3, the impact of the extra bank holiday to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee will all come out in the wash in the end. But it will add …
21st June 2022
The US Fed’s move to raise rates by 75 basis points (bps) this week to 1.50-1.75%, and the 50bps rises by a handful of other central banks, has inevitably led to questions about why the Bank of England raised rates by “only” 25bps on Thursday to 1.25%. In …
17th June 2022
By raising interest rates by 25bps (basis points) today, from 1.00% to 1.25%, rather than by 50bps or the 75bps the Fed announced last night, we think the Bank of England is putting too much weight on the softening economy and not enough on surging …
16th June 2022
First signs of a less tight labour market The tentative evidence that the recent weakening in economic activity is filtering through into a slightly looser labour market may push the Bank of England a little closer to raising interest rates by 25bps …
14th June 2022
Bank may have to raise rates during a recession The 0.3% m/m fall in real GDP in April wasn’t as weak as it looks, but it nonetheless increases the chances that the economy is slipping into recession. While this is unlikely to prevent the Bank of England …
13th June 2022
As former Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said, “a week is a long time in politics”. At the start of the week the current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was fighting for his political life with 41% of his own MPs voting to remove him as leader of the …
10th June 2022
The markets and consensus are underestimating the chances of a 50bps rate hike It’s almost 50-50 between a 50bps and 25bps hike, but we’re going for 50bps Either way, recent events support our view that interest rates will rise to 3.00% next year The …
9th June 2022
Real economic growth is slowing rather than collapsing in the face of the twin drags of higher inflation and rising interest rates. The Chancellor’s latest fiscal handout will help support GDP in the second half of the year. And with the Prime Minister …
8th June 2022
This Rapid Response was sent to clients immediately after the results of the vote of confidence in Boris Johnson at 9.00pm BST on 6 th June 2022. After winning tonight’s confidence vote, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, may double down on Brexit and …
6th June 2022
The unexpectedly strong rise in unsecured borrowing in April adds to the evidence that consumer spending hasn’t collapsed, despite the plunge in consumer confidence and fall in households’ real incomes. (See Chart 1.) Chart 1: Consumer Confidence & …
1st June 2022
Consumers funding spending through borrowing, not savings The solid rise in unsecured borrowing in April suggests that households have turned to credit to support their spending as the cost of living squeeze has intensified. But consumers do not yet …
31st May 2022
There are some question marks over quite how big the fiscal stimulus announced by the Chancellor yesterday proves to be. Much depends on whether the 25% levy on the profits of oil/gas producers lasts beyond the next year, which Sunak said would happen if …
27th May 2022
The extra financial support for households announced by the Chancellor today will help millions of households cope better with the cost of living crisis. But it won’t relieve all the pain and may mean the Bank of England has to pull the interest rate …
26th May 2022
If we are right in expecting inflationary pressure to stay strong even as the economy gets dangerously close to a recession, then the prices of gilts and UK equities will probably fall further over the next year. Our forecast that the Bank of England will …
Activity stalling, but inflationary pressures remain acute The flash PMI survey for May suggests that economic growth has slowed to a crawl and that the risk of a recession has not gone away. Even so, weakness in the economy doesn’t seem to be filtering …
24th May 2022
Changing economic winds may prevent the Chancellor from going big The economic wind that has recently been blowing the public finances to undershoot forecasts adds more pressure on the Chancellor to launch in the coming weeks a big package of measures to …
Another week, another set of target-busting inflation figures, with CPI inflation shooting up from 7.0% in March to a 40-year high of 9.0% in April. (See here .) In contrast, the rise in the euro-zone was smaller, with inflation ticking up from 7.4% in …
20th May 2022
Signs of resilience The unexpectedly strong rise in retail sales in April suggests the cost of living crisis hasn’t caused consumer spending to collapse and means the economy may have a little more momentum than we previously thought. It also supports our …
The recent collapse in consumer confidence to a near-record low has added to the probability that the UK experiences a recession this year. But households’ large stock of savings and the tightness in the labour market means that weak confidence may not …
19th May 2022
Worse to come as inflation may yet climb to 10% If the rise in CPI inflation from 7.0% to a 40-year high of 9.0% in April wasn’t bad enough, inflation will probably rise further to 10% in October and will then fall back to the 2% target only slowly. …
18th May 2022
We estimate that a rise in Bank Rate from 0.10% last November to a peak of 3.00% would mean that GDP is around 2.0% lower than if Bank Rate had stayed at 0.10%. That is a smaller drag than the Bank of England has incorporated into its forecasts. We do not …
17th May 2022
Still tightening even as economy slows Even though the economy contracted in March and may be on the brink of a recession, jobs growth strengthened, the unemployment rate fell to a 47-year low of 3.7% and wage growth accelerated. This supports our view …
The UK government’s plan to use domestic legislation to overwrite parts of the Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol risks creating another headwind for the economy and exacerbating price pressures at a time when CPI inflation is on the cusp of rising to a …
16th May 2022
Following the 0.1% m/m fall in GDP in March , we now think the economy is halfway towards a recession (two quarters of falling output in a row). (See here .) If GDP was flat in April, May and June, then it would be 0.1% lower in Q2 relative to Q1. We’ve …
13th May 2022
Risk of a recession has suddenly increased It now seems likely that GDP will contract in Q2. And with the full hit of the cost of living crisis yet to be felt, the chances of a recession have just risen. Even so, with price pressures still strengthening, …
12th May 2022
The weaker economic outlook triggered by the surge in CPI inflation to a 30-year high of 7.0% in March has yet to put a dent in businesses own expectations for their selling prices. The Bank of England’s Decision Maker Panel survey found that in April …
10th May 2022
As anticipated, this week’s Monetary Policy Report was the third in a row in which the Bank of England revised up its inflation forecast over the next two years and revised down its GDP forecast. But it was the Bank’s dramatic cuts to its GDP forecast and …
6th May 2022
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) struck a more dovish tone today while raising interest rates from 0.75% to a 13-year high of 1.00% and saying that it won’t make a decision until after August on whether to shrink its balance sheet quicker by selling …
5th May 2022
Consumer spending appears to be holding up well so far The decent increase in unsecured borrowing in March suggests that the plunge in consumer confidence and fall in real incomes have not caused consumer spending to collapse. This lends some support to …
4th May 2022
We understand why our new forecast that interest rates will be raised from 0.75% now to a peak to 3.00% next year has generated a lot of interest among clients. After all, it assumes that rates will peak higher than investors (2.50%) and other analysts …
29th April 2022
Our new forecasts that inflation will stay higher for longer and that the labour market will remain tight into 2023 (see here ) suggests that Bank Rate will rise to a peak of 3.00% next year rather than the peak of 2.50% currently priced into the markets. …
Rising price/wage expectations will prompt MPC to raise interest rates by 25bps MPC to announce its decision to sell some of its gilt holdings A tight labour market/more persistent price pressures may mean rates rise to 3.00% in 2023 The weakening …
28th April 2022
Our new forecast that interest rates will be raised from 0.75% now to a peak of 3.00% next year is more hawkish than the peak priced into the financial markets (2.50%) and the peak expected by the consensus of economists (2.00%). That’s because we think …
27th April 2022
Public finances won’t offer much help to the Chancellor in 2022/23 Total borrowing for the 2021/22 fiscal year overshot the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) March 2022 forecast by some £24bn, rounding out the third-worst year for the public …
26th April 2022
The news on the economy was distinctly downbeat this week with evidence of a consumer slowdown mounting (see here and here ) and the IMF predicting that the UK economy will grow by just 1.2% in 2023, the slowest among G7 countries. But that did not stop …
22nd April 2022
PMIs point to continued easing in economic growth The fall in the composite PMI in April suggests GDP growth has continued to slow as the cost of living crisis has intensified. But economic activity doesn’t appear to be collapsing. And, beneath the …
Gloomy signs of spending crunch The hefty fall in retail sales in March marks the second consecutive month of decline and adds to signs that the real wage squeeze is hitting consumer spending. With CPI inflation already at a 30-year high and set to keep …
If Chancellor Rishi Sunak was hoping that the economy would provide some respite from the political hot waters that he’s found himself in recently then data released over the past week will have come as another blow. First came figures released on Monday …
14th April 2022