US inflation data beats expectations as Americans spend their Covid stimulus cheques April 13, 2021 US inflation rose 2.6 per cent year-on-year in March, ahead of analyst expectations of a 2.5 per cent rise, as more of Washington’s fiscal stimulus filtered down into the real economy. It’s a jump from the 1.7 per cent inflation rate measured last month. The month-on-month rate in March was a 0.6 per cent jump [...]
Will ESG turn Bitcoin into a digital ‘stranded asset’ or monetary MySpace? (Part II) April 13, 2021 | City Talk In this second instalment of a two-part piece, Ben Ashby, Derek Usher and Gerard Fox explain why environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors will undermine Bitcoin’s eye-catching rise, here focusing on the ‘S’ and ‘G’. We at Good Governance Capital (GGC) are enormously enthusiastic and supportive of innovation and competition in finance. As former mainstream [...]
GDP data: UK construction ‘head and shoulders above other sectors’ in Covid recovery April 13, 2021 The construction sector is playing a key role as the fastest growing sector of the UK’s Covid-hit economy, according to analysts. The UK economy edged up 0.4 per cent in February as it rebounded from a January slump, helped by a 1.6 per cent rise in construction. The sector’s improvement was driven by growth in [...]
UK PMIs: Service sector returns to growth as lockdown end nears April 7, 2021 The UK’s services industry returned to growth in March, with business activity, new orders and unemployment all rebounding from the previous month. New data released this morning shows that the UK’s impressive vaccine rollout had seen the economy recover at a faster rate than initially expected. The IHS Markit/Cips purchasing managers (PMI) index for services registered 56.3 [...]
IMF raises growth forecast for UK and global economy after vaccine successes April 6, 2021 The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised its forecast for UK economic growth, which is set to outpace the euro zone this year after its slump in 2020, but is unlikely to regain its pre-pandemic size until 2022. The IMF said the economy will grow by 5.3 per cent in 2021, up from a previous [...]
Will ESG turn Bitcoin into a digital ‘stranded asset’ or monetary MySpace? (Part I) April 6, 2021 | City Talk In this first instalment of a two-part piece, Ben Ashby, Derek Usher and Gerard Fox explain why environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors will undermine Bitcoin’s eye-catching rise, here focusing on the ‘E’. We have many economic reasons for believing that ‘first-generation’ crypto assets will fail to displace either ‘conventional’ money or traditional safe assets [...]
Mid-sized firms set for investment and hiring spree as UK exits lockdown April 5, 2021 Mid-sized firms set to splurge on investment and new hires as UK exits lockdown
Sterling steadies after strongest quarter against the euro since 2015 April 1, 2021 The pound was little changed against the dollar on Thursday and a touch lower against the euro, but traders remained optimistic about its longer-term prospects. Sterling had its strongest quarter against the euro since 2015 in the first three months of the year, gaining around 4.8 per cent. UK manufacturing activity grew sharply in March [...]
Bernoulli’s Prisoner’s Dilemma: applying the scenario to modern markets March 30, 2021 | City Talk In 1738, the Swiss mathematician and physicist Daniel Bernoulli proposed a simple thought experiment: “A rich prisoner who possesses two thousand ducats but needs two thousand ducats more to repurchase his freedom, will place a higher value on a gain of two thousand ducats than does another man with less money than he.” Let’s place [...]
Frugal February: Brits paid off £1.2bn in credit card debt and overdrafts in final month of full lockdown March 29, 2021 Frugal February: Brits paid off £1.2bn in credit card debt and overdrafts in final month of full lockdown