Ear to the Ground
With February now drawn to a close, we provide a summary of market movements for the month rather than the usual Fund Focus, which will return next week.
Ear to the Ground
Whilst the result was already known, the market keenly awaited the publishing of the minutes of the last US Federal Reserve meeting. These revealed that the majority of the policy setting committee members had voted in favour of a 0.25% hike.
Ear to the Ground
Here in the UK, a congratulations to the FTSE 100 which breached the 8,000 level for the first time. Despite weak earnings from Barclays, there were strong earnings posted by Centrica, whose principal activity is the supply of electricity and gas in the UK.
Ear to the Ground
The preliminary release for fourth quarter GDP in the UK showed that the UK economy stalled in the period. Although third quarter figures were revised down, showing a contraction of -0.2%, the flat figure meant that the economy narrowly avoided recession.
Ear to the Ground
I am very much at risk of sounding like a broken record, again, but… it was again a week when central banks around the world stole the limelight. In the US, the Federal Reserve raised the target range for the fed funds rate by 0.25% to 4.5%-4.75%.
Ear to the Ground
A quieter week on the economic data front, with little out of the UK or the Euro area. In the latter there were numerous speeches made by ECB members which appear suggest that
Ear to the Ground
We start in the east this week, Japan in particular, where we had a number of announcements. Firstly, we had the Bank of Japan meet to decide on the level of interest rates. Here the decision was made to keep the rate on hold at -0.1%, which was in line with market expectations.
Ear to the Ground
This week we saw the World Bank make a change to its investment outlook for 2023. The organisation had previously forecast that the global economy would grow by 3% this year.
Ear to the Ground
Some might have expected the first week back in 2023 to be a quiet affair. This has proved not to be the case, however. In the US we had the release of the December FOMC meeting.
Ear to the Ground
“Follow the leader”! Or instead of a game of “Simon Says”, are we currently witnessing a game of “Powell Says”? This week was a week for interest rate decisions, with respective committees meeting in the US, UK and the EU. First up we had the US Federal Reserve, as expected, raised interest rates by 0.5% to the 4.25%-4.50% range. This was the seventh consecutive rate hike…
