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...Ten-year US borrowing costs have risen to 4.2 per cent from 3.9 per cent at the start of the year, but remain far below a peak of more than 5 per cent reached last October when markets were worried about...
...The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which gave states the right to set abortion policies, split the country....
...Mary Perkins jokes that if you were to cut Specsavers’ workers open, “they’ve got green blood”....
...The rise in consumer prices for the year to February was below both the 3.5 per cent predicted by economists in a Reuters poll and January’s 4 per cent rate....
...The agency said its survey suggested unemployment was 3.9 per cent in the three months to January, up from 3.8 per cent in the three months to December and from 3.8 per cent a year earlier....
..., compared with 3.5 per cent expected by economists polled by LSEG....
...The pound was up 0.06 per cent against the dollar at 1.2727, after official figures showed headline annual inflation was 3.4 per cent in February, slightly less than the 3.5 per cent expected by economists...
...The fund group forecast that gilts would deliver an average annual return of 3.7 per cent over the next decade, compared with 4.4 per cent for Italian government bonds and 2.2 per cent for German Bunds....
...Friday’s rise in GDP was in line with analysts’ expectations and followed 0.3 per cent monthly growth in January — which itself was upwardly revised from a preliminary figure of 0.2 per cent on Friday....
...The move in yields sent stocks lower: the blue-chip S&P 500 was down 0.8 per cent in mid-morning trade in New York and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had dropped 1.3 per cent....
...Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, forecast that the US terminal rate would be between 3.25 per cent and 3.5 per cent, and that the Fed had “a little bit of status quo bias”....
...“In politics, when you straddle a fence, it does not end well,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist. “[Trump] wants it both ways....
...The country’s annual headline inflation rate fell to 3.8 per cent in January, within the central bank’s tolerance band for the first time since March 2021....
...Mary McDougall...
...Higher borrowing costs are set to push governments’ interest expenses across member countries up from 2.9 per cent of GDP last year to 3.4 per cent in 2026, according to the OECD’s estimates, adding pressure...
...This week’s increase in US consumer price inflation — which hit a higher than expected 3.5 per cent for March — has prompted traders to increase bets that the Fed might deliver as few as one rate cut this...
...Prices are still some way below the inflation-adjusted record of well above $3,000 per troy ounce hit in 1980 and some analysts say the current rally shows there is a firm floor under the price....
...In comparison, the equivalent German Bund is up 0.3 percentage points to 2.4 per cent....
...But despite hitting a nominal all-time high, gold is still some way off its inflation-adjusted all-time high of $3,355 per troy ounce reached in 1980 when oil-driven inflation and turmoil in the Middle East...
...While the unemployment rate rose to 3.9 per cent from 3.7 per cent the month before, it remains low by historic standards....
...Dealing fees in the secondary market start at £11.95 on Hargreaves Lansdown and are £3.99 for Interactive Investor’s “investor plan”....
...National Savings and Investments, the other channel through which private savers can directly lend money to the government, offers an interest rate of 3.65 per cent on its savings accounts....
...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....
...Economists polled by Reuters expect the headline annual rate to rise to 3.4 per cent. Readings for January and February have already come in above analysts’ forecasts....
...The vote split was 6-3 at the December meeting. Traders in swaps markets are pricing the first quarter-point rate cut by June, with 1.1 percentage points of cuts priced by the end of the year....
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