Hints and tips:
Related Special Reports
...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...
...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...
...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....
...The S&P 500 index of blue-chip companies is up more than 9 per cent since 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”....
...The S&P purchasing manager’s index, a measure of activity in the private sector, rose to 53.3 in February, up from 52.9 in January and the highest since May 2023....
...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...
...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....
...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...
...Markets continue to price around three quarter point cuts this year....
...As well as February’s unexpected increase in inflation to 3.2 per cent, separate data this week showed a 0.6 per cent month-on-month surge in producer prices....
...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....
...But not everyone believes gold prices are heading for a fall....
...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....
...Mary McDougall...
...The S&P 500 has hovered just short of its January 2022 record in thin post-Christmas trading before dipping 0.3 per cent on Friday’s last trading day....
...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...
...in producer prices, viewed as a leading indicator of consumer price inflation....
International Edition