Budgets, presidents and a breakfast

At the back end of last week to coincide with Rachel Reeves’ first budget announcements and the imminent US Presidential election, we co-hosted a breakfast event with corporate advisers SI Partners.

The morning’s focus was James Baird from SI Partners interviewing Chris Wyllie our Chief Investment Officer on the topic of – how politics don’t usually impact global markets and the investment landscape but how this time may be different.

Chris talked about the interaction of US interest rates and inflation, and the recent machinations of The Fed in its attempts to manage both. The discussion looked at how different presidential outcomes could affect the US economy and the broader global one, and also how today it is the Republicans rather than Democrats who appear to be pursuing policies that may result in higher levels of government debt.

Government deficit spending was a recurring theme, with the US leading the pack amongst the largest western economies. Forecasts show that this is set to continue with debt reaching new peace time highs going into 2025 and beyond.

James and Chris also touched briefly on how the UK Budget may impact on things locally both for businesses and individuals, before Chris took our guests through a summary of our current investment ‘traffic light’ indicators.

Thanks to our co-hosts SI Partners and to the team at Fora Victoria.