Firstly my apologies for not keeping up with my ‘blog’ schedule, but like so many of you, I have become a little engulfed and ‘meehhh‘ about the whole lockdown thing this time around; added to which I now have a very close friend in hospital on a ventilator after contracting the virus (he is in his 50’s and otherwise very healthy, so quite a wake-up call for me).
On a positive note, investment markets continue to progress within the UK and to a good extent globally, with shares returning to value in the UK now that we have a clearer path for the economy in the year ahead (hopefully).
Keeping to the script and away from politics, the outlook for growth away from cash deposits seems somewhat more certain than we have seen for a couple of years and there are some small but encouraging signs in terms of businesses and production returning from the continent to the UK under Brexit and goodness knows we will need the job creation programme that’s for sure!
One thing that has been talked about in recent months and which I have convered under previous blogs, is the subject of whether or not interest rates may actually turn ‘negative.’ Whilst this has been trialled in some countries, just yesterday the Governor of the Bank of England poured cold water on the notion, so it looks like, unless things take another turn for the worse economically and we fall into a second recession, interest rates will most likely remain at or around where they are now for the forseeable future; not good news for cash deposits but positive news for mortgage and lending propositions and for business generally.
So in summary, I think that things are quietly moving up nicely and, in order not to tempt providence, I had better leave it at that for now and hope thta you are all keeping healthy, getting vaccinated where you wish to and remaining positive.