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...But he said he did not think recent readings had “really changed the overall story” of price pressures easing to 2 per cent....
...Mary EvansHeathfield, East Sussex, UK...
...The gains have come as the resilience of the global economy surprised investors, while higher commodity prices have benefited countries such as oil exporters Nigeria and Angola and copper producer Zambia...
...The bets against sterling have come as falling US bond prices have weighed on gilts....
...The total value of Italy’s bonds borrowed by investors to wager on a fall in prices rose to €50.7bn this week, up from €38bn at the start of the year....
...However, the BoE is wary of jumping too soon after its hard-won fight to get price pressures from double-digit levels to the current 3.2 per cent rate....
...Mary Perkins jokes that if you were to cut Specsavers’ workers open, “they’ve got green blood”....
...That’s because for investors who own gilts outside tax wrappers, income tax is payable on the coupon — the fixed cash payment issued every six months — but there is no tax on any increase in the gilt price...
...The price of gold has surged to a record high, driven by growing expectations of US interest rate cuts, investors hunting for haven assets and months of prodigious buying by central banks and Chinese investors...
...The probability of the first 0.25 percentage point cut being delivered by June rose from about 50 per cent to 60 per cent, with traders moving to price in three cuts by the end of the year....
...Markets continue to price around three quarter point cuts this year....
...But not everyone believes gold prices are heading for a fall....
...And last week, the Commerce Department reported that the personal consumption expenditures price index — the measure of inflation the Fed uses for its target — accelerated at a pace of 2.5 per cent in February...
...Sustained dollar strength could cause problems for countries looking to cut rates without undermining their currencies and accelerating price rises....
...Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, was 4.5 per cent, compared with expectations of 4.6 per cent....
...This article has been amended to make clear that there has been a fall in UK consumer price inflation, not consumer prices...
...Traders in swaps markets moved to fully price three 0.25 percentage point cuts in 2024....
...“If the recent trend of higher energy and commodity prices continues, then it has the potential to cause a rerun of the 2022 financial market environment, which was a grim time for bonds and risk assets...
...For existing bonds, your platform will show the price of the bond and the coupon rate, but the annualised return you will receive if you hold it to maturity is harder to gauge if the price differs significantly...
...Mary McDougall...
...in producer prices, viewed as a leading indicator of consumer price inflation....
...Retail investors will be given the average price of the auction and will not have to pay any dealing fees, unlike for gilts bought through platforms in the secondary market....
...House prices also rose compared with 12 months earlier for the first time in more than a year last month, according to figures published earlier this month by Nationwide....
...The ECB said after its governing council met in Frankfurt that its benchmark deposit rate would stay at 4 per cent until rate-setters were sure price pressures had stabilised....
...Complicating the outlook on inflation are surging prices for industrial metals and oil — with Brent crude topping $92 a barrel for the first time since October....
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