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Despite a more positive end to Thursday, volatility continues to remain elevated (VIX Index remains above 30).The end of the week has seen Italy and Greece, announce firm commitments to form governments led by market friendly candidates. Italian bond yields have declined although remaining worryingly high for the ECB and…
The phrase ‘no news is good news’ would be an accurate way of describing the last two weeks. Yesterday, the news that Silvio Berlusconi was to resign as Prime Minister of Italy was meant to lift market sentiment – instead Italian bond yields rose to 7.5%, the Euro weakened and…
Yields on 10 year Italian bonds rose yesterday to 6.68%, a Euro era high for the country, and precariously close to the 7% which would mean that Italy needs to seek a bail out. This is despite the ECB ramping up its bond buying to €9.52 billion, during the first…
The good news is that Greek politics might now drop out of the limelight as a cross-party coalition Government is being formed in order to ensure payment of the latest tranche of EU/IMF aid. The bad news is that it is being rapidly replaced centre-stage by Italian politics, with Prime…
Yesterday saw sovereign debt return to the market, in both the Euro zone and the US. The S&P revised its long-term outlook on US debt from stable to negative citing, the lack of a plan in addressing the very large budget deficit means that the US is in a significantly…
The Euro is subdued against the dollar and sterling this morning as the sovereign debt crisis again raises its head. Yesterday the German finance minister admitted that Greek debt may need to be restructured, despite last year’s £97bn bail out. The reason for this restructuring is that the Greek government…
Good news! The Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell back from 4.4% in February to 4% in March as supermarkets and High Street chains cut prices. This is great news from a personal point of view as nothing attracts my eyes in a supermarket quite like a red and white sale…
It was only a couple of weeks ago that the morning note was reporting the biggest squeeze on people’s incomes since 1981. It now appears that this dire figure may have been overly optimistic, with the Centre for Economics and Business Research reporting at the weekend that household disposable income…
As expected, the Bank of England kept rates on hold at 0.5% for another month, with spiralling UK inflation not enough to convince the MPC to change direction. As ever, it won’t be until the minutes are released in a couple of weeks that we see how each member voted…
There was an unexpected piece of good news with yesterday’s services PMI surging to a 13 month high of 57.1 in March from 52.6 in February – with anything above 50 indicating growth. This 4.5 point rise in the index is the second biggest increase since the survey started in…