With the on-going cost of living crisis, the war in Ukraine, and the situation in Gaza, the world seems quite an unsettled place right now, so it’s perhaps a surprise to see that the first quarter of 2024 has been a positive one for equities, with some markets rallying to new all-time highs.
The main reason for this has been better than anticipated economic performance and consequentially a growing optimism that there won’t be a global recession let alone a major one. The question that investors have been asking for some time therefore is when will central banks cut interest rates? Opinion on this has ebbed and flowed with each new economic release or comment from the US Federal Reserve. As we stand today, the good news about the economy probably means that interest rates won’t be cut as soon as some investors had hoped for because inflation may prove to be stickier than initially thought.
