Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of The Week Ahead!
No interest rate decisions: this is an “off” week in terms of Western central bank activity. The Federal Reserve, Bank of England and European Central Bank are all due to meet in mid-March, so we have several weeks of quiet before we have to think about interest rates again.
For now, the focus is on earnings, earnings, earnings. Next week will see another deluge of earnings announcements from UK companies.
There will be few US/international results to distract us, with most American companies having already published their numbers by this stage.
Instead, we’ll have a wide range of interesting domestic stocks to review.
Spring statement: There will be one important piece of economic news to digest: Rachel Reeves’ Spring economic statement, which is due on Tuesday and will be accompanied by various official economic estimates from the OBR.
After the dramatic Autumn statement, which saw OBR numbers released prior to the Chancellor’s speech, the Spring statement is expected to be a much quieter affair.
For one thing, the OBR is not going to be tasked with checking whether or not the government is on course to meet its fiscal rules. They are now only being asked to do that once annually. And after the embarrassment around the release of data in Autumn, we can presume that there will not be any repeat this time around.
The Autumn speech was a fiery affair, primarily because of the wide range of tax and spending changes. It was undeniably a high-tax and high-spend budget: the many changes included adjustments to ISA allowances, the freezing of personal tax thresholds, and increases in the tax rates on dividends, property and savings income.
Readers of our daily report will remember that the looming Autumn budget was described by many companies as a cause of economic uncertainty, and that after it was finally released there was a wave of relief that businesses could now proceed with clarity.
Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, say that next week’s statement will be “low-key” and that it’s being treated at the Treasury as a “Spring forecast” rather than a “Spring statement”. The plan is to avoid a repeat of the intense speculation and drama that surrounded the Autumn statement, in order to prevent this drama from being…
