UK markets take Autumn Assertion in stride

Sterling and gilts fell on Thursday as traders digested Jeremy Hunt’s plans to restore the UK’s public funds, unwinding a part of a powerful rally within the run-up to the chancellor’s Autumn Assertion.

The pound traded 1.0 per cent decrease on the day at $1.179 in opposition to the greenback after Hunt detailed a bundle of spending cuts and tax rises that he described as a “path to stability”, extending losses seen earlier than the chancellor started his assertion to parliament. Sterling stays effectively above late September’s all-time low of lower than $1.04 and never far beneath a three-month excessive of greater than $1.20 reached earlier this week.

Gilts got here underneath strain after the UK Debt Administration Workplace mentioned Hunt’s measures would lead to a discount in bond gross sales within the 2022-23 monetary 12 months to £170bn, beneath the determine of £194bn on the time of Liz Truss’s ill-fated “mini” Funds in September and fewer than the £185bn anticipated by traders. Nonetheless, though the DMO doesn’t present a gilt gross sales determine for the next 12 months, the federal government’s financing requirement for 2023-24 was larger than that anticipated by markets at greater than £300bn.

The ten-year gilt yield traded at 3.22 per cent, up about 0.09 proportion factors on the day, and much beneath the excessive of greater than 4.5 per cent hit in late September after Truss’s unfunded tax cuts spooked markets.

“All the main target in the previous couple of weeks has been on the shift from Truss to Hunt and [Prime Minister Rishi] Sunak, who mentioned all the proper issues to reassure markets,” mentioned Antoine Bouvet, an rates of interest strategist at ING. “However now persons are how a lot gilt traders must swallow subsequent 12 months, and it’s going to be a document quantity by far. That’s what’s worrying the market.”

The involvement of the OBR, which introduced fiscal forecasts to accompany Hunt’s plans — in distinction to the sidelining of the Funds watchdog by Truss — reassured traders, mentioned Nomura foreign money strategist Jordan Rochester.

“However what the Funds will do finally is decrease UK development expectations down the road,” added Rochester.