Worldwide Financial Planning

Some journalists in certain ‘newspapers’ (which were a perfectly good functioning tree) love a headline. Others love facts. I find the drama unnecessarily upsetting for SJP customers and wholly inaccurate.

Meanwhile, stickier inflation makes it harder for the Bank of England to cut rates in the very short term and higher government borrowing has wiped out any chance of further tax cuts to sweeten the electorate.

LET’S look at how they compare. I’ll have to be broad with the comparison by looking at house prices across the whole of the UK. I’ll compare average rents, repairs, mortgages and see how the numbers work out.

In monthly terms, CPI was 0.3% (consensus: 0.1%), compared to 0.6% in March. Similarly, core CPI inflation (ex-energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) came in at 3.9% (consensus: 3.6%) vs 4.2% in March.

An end to the interest rate hiking cycle would be welcomed by US consumers, who have seen new US mortgage rates spend four weeks above 7% for just the third time this century. Despite this, new home loan applications increased by 2.3% in the week ending August 25.

While the market is easily fooled by headlines so too, unfortunately, are central banks. The true state of the economy won’t be clear for months so policy makers have to make do with the data they have, while the impact of today’s decisions won’t be apparent for another year.