He abolished the tax on home purchases for first-time buyers on all properties up to 300,000 pounds, handed an extra 7.5 billion pounds to the health service and smoothed access to welfare benefits. Each policy represented an attempt to close off lines of attack from the opposition Labour Party still feeling the glow of June’s election which cost May her parliamentary majority. Yet the OBR was quick to point out the flaws in the headline-grabbing stamp duty announcement. Though sold as a popular measure to help aspiring homeowners, it will increase house prices by 0.3 percent” and “the main gainers from the policy are people who already own property.”
In the US sesssion Durable Goods Orders and Unemployment Claims figures were published. Orders of these so-called core capital goods increased at a 14.5 percent annualized pace in the three months prior to October, the strongest since June 2013. Economists had forecast orders of core capital goods increasing 0.5 percent last month after a previously reported 1.7 percent jump in September. Core capital goods orders rose 4.4 percent on a year-on-year basis. Shipments of core capital goods advanced 0.4 percent last month after accelerating by 1.2 percent in September, pushing the annualized three-month pace to 13.1 percent. Core capital goods shipments are used to calculate equipment spending in the government’s gross domestic product measurement.
In the week ending November 18, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 239,000, a decrease of 13,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 3,000 from 249,000 to 252,000. The 4-week moving average was 239,750, an increase of 1,250 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 750 from 237,750 to 238,500.
However, the focus of the session was on FOMC Meeting Minutes. The Federal Reserve left the door open a crack for keeping interest rates unchanged until the end of year amid nagging doubts about the persistence of low inflation. Minutes of the Fed’s two-day meeting that ended Nov. 1 show the bank is still on track to raise interest rates soon, but the Fed used somewhat more ambiguous language than it did in September. “Many” Fed policymakers viewed an increase in the benchmark short-term rate as “warranted in the near term,” the minutes said. By contrast Fed officials in September agreed that a rate hike was likely “later this year.”
Although most Fed officials still think inflation has been held down by temporary factors that will soon fade, they are less certain than they were just several months ago. Low inflation “might reflect not only transitory factors, but also the influence of developments that could prove more persistent,” the minutes showed. “Many participants observed that there was some likelihood that inflation might remain below 2% for longer than they currently expected.” Some Fed members even took the extraordinary step of suggesting the central bank’s own actions or public statements over the past few years might be partly to blame for fostering a decline in long-term inflation expectations.
Tomorrow's session will bring UK Second Estimate GDP figures. No change from prelim reading showing 0.4% growth is expected. There will be no data releases in the US part of the session.
Figures to watch:
Second Estimate GDP (Thursday 10:30)
