While inflation has eased from February to March, lower oil prices helping the drop to 2.8% from 2.6%, the Bank of England believes we will see a spike upwards to not far short of double the 2% target rate for inflation this year. Given this near certainty, with the raft of price rises hitting us all and the National Insurance hike being passed on to consumers across the board in many different ways, you would not normally expect interest rates to drop below the 4.5% level where they are now but this is exactly what markets are expecting. Don’t bet against the first ¼% cut coming very soon at the Monetary Policy Committee meeting on May 8^th and another half pct in two portions later in the year. These meetings take place every 6 weeks and may well be the only good economic news on the 2025 horizon.

However, the global economic situation is pretty unpredictable at the moment and may well stay that way for the next 3 years or so. Who would have thought leaders of countries around the globe, big and small, would be reduced to finding out what their cost of exporting to the US would be on social media?