The Chancellor has taken a bit of a gamble with all the additional tax revenues and extra borrowing, she hopes it will provide greater efficiencies and growth for the UK economy, with little room to manoeuvre if it doesn’t. Many companies have hit out at the additional expense they will have to bear the brunt of with prices likely to rise to offset the extra taxes. Sainsburys has stated that food prices will have to increase to offset its additional £140m tax bill, all of which will add to the inflation figure.
The Bank of England has once again dropped interest rates which now stand at 4.75% and it is highly likely that rates will continue to fall gradually throughout next year. Although the scale of the falls is very dependent on inflation remaining around the 2% mark, with the current rate of inflation at 1.7%.
There was a strong performance for global stocks at the beginning of October, particularly in the US, where record highs were achieved. This was based on expectations of further interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and that the economy was in for a ‘soft landing’, however, the gains were reversed by the end of October with investors getting nervous of the US election.
Staying with the US election, the result of which has seen a return to power for Donald Trump and defeat for Kamala Harris. The reaction from markets has been generally mixed with early big gains in the European markets being eroded when implications of Trump’s protectionism sank in. The US saw a mixture of winners and losers, The Dow Jones hit a record high, also Tesla, (due to Elon Musk backing Trump), US banks, private equity companies, defence and oil and gas companies have all made big gains since the result.
The losers of the election result were renewable firms along with tariff exposed firms such as the shipping companies as they brace themselves for steeper levies on imports, with a plan to impose a 20% tariff on goods from Europe and 60% for China, thus providing the potential back drop for trade wars.
The general market outlook is for continued low level growth within the UK and Europe due to lower consumer consumption, this is in contrast to the US economy which is currently growing at 2.8% for Q3 2024. China and other emerging markets are also continuing to grow faster than both US and European countries, however, with president-elect Trump coming into power in January with a higher tariff mandate this may have implications for these nations.
As mentioned on previous notes, geopolitics will continue to play a big part in how the global economy plays out for the remainder of the year and into 2025, tensions in the Middle East and the ongoing war in Ukraine will come sharply into focus when Trump takes on the presidency in the coming months.
Overall, we remain optimistic on continued growth, albeit at a lower level than we have seen over the past 12 months. Inflation is forecast to remain broadly around the Bank of England’s target of 2%, however, higher energy costs, higher employer costs and lower pay deals may see this challenged next year.