Week Ending 15th November 2024 Stocks sank on Friday, recording steep weekly losses as investors absorbed Chair Jerome Powell’s signal that the Federal Reserve won’t hurry to make interest-rate cuts. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) dropped 1.3%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) slid 0.7%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led declines, falling 2.2%. Powell’s […]

The Bank of England has forecast Rachel Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought. Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary […]

A stronger performance for job creation in the United States appears to have eased financial market fears of a US recession. Closely-watched employment data showed that 142,000 net new jobs were created in the world’s largest economy last month. While that was below forecasts of 160,000, it represented a significant recovery on a downwardly revised […]

The annual pace of price rises in the world’s largest economy fell from 3% in June to 2.9% in July, according to official figures. It comes as financial markets expect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates next month for the first time since March 2020. Analysts have widely forecast that easing inflation in the […]

US interest rates are to be cut just once this year, according to updated forecasts from its central bank. The cost of US borrowing was kept at a more than 20-year high despite news on Wednesday that inflation, the rate of price rises, fell to the lowest level in more than three years at 3.4%The […]

The Bank of England has edged closer to a cut in interest rates, with another member of its nine-person Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voting for lower borrowing costs this month. While the MPC voted 7-2 to leave UK interest rates on hold at 5.25%, the change in the vote will be seen as a further […]

The US central bank, the Fed, has again kept interest rates high – at 5.25% to 5.5%. It comes despite the policymaker signaling in January that interest rate cuts were around the corner. Progress in bringing down rates and making borrowing cheaper has been hampered by rising inflation in the US. It could now be […]

Despite a weaker-than-expected first-quarter GDP reading, the US economy is “firing on all cylinders” and inflation is on a path toward a more normal level, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday in an interview with Reuters. Yellen on Thursday was interviewed by Reuters’ editor in chief Alessandra Galloni as part of the news organization’s […]

The UK economy has grown slightly for the second month in a row, official figures show. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew just 0.1% in February, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. It’s another signal that the UK Economy is working its way out of recession. Growth of 0.3% was recorded last month – and that […]

The Bank of England has held interest rates at 5.25% for a fifth consecutive time, but says the prospects for a cut are now “moving in the right direction”. The nine-member rate-setting committee continued to collectively judge it was too early to contemplate a downwards move, despite further progress in taming inflation revealed earlier this […]