Brexit

Inflation on the rise ahead of the Brexit deadline

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation rose to 2.1% in July, up from 2% according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The ONS’s alternative measure, CPIH, which includes housing costs, stood at exactly 2% for July.

The stats body says that the biggest contributor to the CPIH measure of inflation in the past nine months has been housing and household services, rising by 1.9% on average. Chiefly to blame are gas and electric bills and council tax rate increases adding to household bills. See the graph below.

Five ways to protect your investments against Brexit currency swings

When you invest in – for example – an S&P 500 ETF, you are tracking the movements of the US large-cap equity market, but you are also left at the mercy of the USD/GBP exchange rate.

This is not a trivial point. Since the Brexit vote in 2016, the pound has dropped 15% against the US dollar, boosting already strong US equity returns to UK-based investors.

Where next for house prices?

The sheer volume of data about the UK housing market that is bandied around these days means that it is sometimes hard to grasp what is really going on.

An innovative heatmap (below) produced by Samuel Tombs, UK chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, provides a simple overview: it uses colours to show what prices have done in each region year by year: green for the biggest rise, red for the biggest fall.

What’s worse than Brexit? Six bigger investment threats

Politics is a parochial pursuit – on both sides of the argument. It’s easy enough to characterise those overcome by Brexit fervour as narrow-minded and insular: their desire for a more extreme form of departure from the EU than any referendum campaigner ever envisaged speaks for itself. Yet those who describe the potential for a no-deal Brexit as the most serious threat in our time to the UK’s economic prosperity are just as blinkered in their own way: there are any number of scarier risks that presage more substantial damage.

Three years on from Brexit vote: the best-performing funds

It is almost three years since the UK voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. While the UK has still not left, decided how it will leave, or who will be the prime minister when (or if) it eventually leaves, Brexit has been a constant factor weighing on investors’ minds.

Theresa May resigns: what next for markets?

Following Theresa May’s widely expected announcement that she would resign, the immediate reaction of currency markets appeared confused.

Having suffered declines over the past few days, the unsurprising announcement initially saw sterling rally against the euro and dollar. Those gains, however, soon waned, with sterling starting to trend down again at the time of writing at midday on 24 May.  

The UK equity funds that offer protection against Brexit

The UK stock market has a heavy international bias, with many companies listed in the country having little or no exposure to the UK economy in terms of revenue are listed on the London Stock Exchange. Of all companies listed on the FTSE 100, for example, over 70% of revenue is derived from abroad.

Gold demand hits six-month high against uncertain Brexit backdrop

Gold bullion saw an uptick in demand from private investors in the month of March against the uncertain Brexit backdrop, according to data from BullionVault.

The firm said its Gold Investor index, which measures sentiment based on trading among its 75,000 international and UK users, last month rose by 2.3 points to 54.5, its highest level in six months.