As inflation remains unchanged and interest rates head up again, there’s ‘no hope on the horizon for hard-pressed households’. And why would there be, as ‘if it ain’t hurting, it ain’t working’. Through-the-roof mortgage payments may ruin lives, but the fact that no one can afford to buy stuff (no one not including those without mortgages and with index-linked pensions) means that prices should come down because companies will still want to sell that same stuff. The flip side of that is that, if you are one of those without a mortgage, money in the bank earning a lot more than it did a year ago and investments recovering apace and an index-linked income, you can still afford to go out and inflate the economy, holiday in Madeira and pay your electricity bill. Which may seem a tax unfair to some.
“Do not expect America’s interest rates to fall just yet”
As rehearsed many times on these pages, the next move onwards and upwards for your investments depends largely on the decisions of various bankers and economists in what would once have been ‘smoke-filled rooms’.