Tag Archives: Central banking

Euro zone inflation hits 10.7% in October

Inflation in the euro zone remains extremely high. Protestors in Italy used empty shopping trolleys to demonstrate the cost-of-living crisis.

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Euro zone inflation rose above the 10% level in the month of October, highlighting the severity of the cost-of-living crisis in the region and adding more pressure on the European Central Bank.

Preliminary data on Monday from Europe’s statistics office showed headline inflation came in at an annual 10.7% last month. This represents the highest ever monthly reading since the euro zone’s formation. The 19-member bloc has faced higher prices, particularly on energy and food, for the past 12 months. But the increases have been accentuated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February.

This proved to be the case once again, with energy costs expected to have had the highest annual rise in October, at 41.9% from 40.7% in September. Food, alcohol and tobacco prices also rose in the same period, jumping 13.1% from 11.8% in the previous month.

“Inflation surged again in October and are a proper Halloween nightmare for the ECB,” analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in an email.

Salomon Fiedler, an economist at Berenberg, said the “continuing surge in consumer prices and still-resilient domestic demand in the summer indicate a risk that the European Central Bank may hike rates by 75 basis points in December, rather than the 50 basis points we currently expect.”

Italy’s inflation above 12%

Monday’s data comes after individual countries reported flash estimates last week. In Italy, headline inflation came in above analysts’ expectations at 12.8% year-on-year. Germany also said inflation jumped to 11.6% and in France the number reached 7.1%. The different values reflect measures taken by national governments, as well as the level of dependency that there nations have, or had, on Russian hydrocarbons.

There are, however, euro nations where inflation rose by more than 20%. This includes Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The European Central Bank — whose primary target is to control inflation — on Thursday confirmed further rate hikes in the coming months in an attempt to bring prices down. It said in a statement that it had made “substantial progress” in normalizing rates in the region, but it “expects to raise interest rates further, to ensure the timely return of inflation to its 2% medium-term inflation target.”

The ECB decided to raise rates by 75 basis points for a second consecutive time last week.

Speaking at a subsequent press conference, ECB President Christine Lagarde said the likelihood of a recession in the euro zone had intensified.

Growth figures released Monday showed a GDP (gross domestic product) figure of 0.2% for the euro area in October. This is after the region grew at a rate of 0.8% in the second quarter. Only Belgium, Latvia and Austria registered GDP rates below zero.

So far, the 19-member bloc has dodged a recession but an economic slowdown is evident. Several economists predict there will be a contraction in GDP during the current quarter.

Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics, said “the increase in euro zone GDP in the third quarter does not alter our view that the euro zone is on the cusp of a recession.”

“But with inflation having jumped to well over 10%, the ECB will prioritise price stability and press on with rate hikes regardless,” he added.

The euro traded below parity against the U.S. dollar in early European trading hours Monday and ahead of the new data releases, and barely moved after the new figures. The euro has been weaker against the greenback and that’s also something the ECB has been concerned about with concerns that this will push up inflation in the euro zone even further.

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Japanese yen hits 150 against the U.S. dollar

The Japanese yen weakened past 150 against the U.S. dollar, a key psychological level, reaching levels not seen since August 1990.

The Bank of Japan’s two-day meeting is slated for next week. Policymakers have ruled out a rate hike in order to defend against further weakening of the currency.

On Thursday, Japan’s 10-year government debt yields breached the 0.25% ceiling that the central bank vowed to defend – last standing at 0.252%. The yield on the 20-year bond also rose to its highest since September 2015.

The Bank of Japan also announced emergency bond-buying operations Thursday. It offered to buy 100 billion yen ($666.98 million) worth of Japanese government bonds with maturities of 10-20 years and another tranche worth 100 billion yen with maturities of 5-10 years.

The central bank has repeatedly vowed to buy an unlimited amount of bonds at a fixed rate in order to cap 10-year government debt yields at 0.25% as part of its stimulus measures for the economy.

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On Thursday, Reuters reported Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said the government will take “appropriate steps against excess volatility.”

“Recent rapid and one-sided yen declines are undesirable. We absolutely cannot tolerate excessively volatile moves driven by speculative trading,” he said.

Levels ‘not destabilizing’

When asked how concerning is USD/JPY reaching levels around 150, ANZ chief economist Richard Yetsenga said he’s “not that worried.”

“I don’t think we’re into destabilizing currency territory yet,” he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”

“There’s lots of emotive words around it, but what problems has it engendered?” he said.

Shortly after the Bank of Japan’s latest decision to maintain low interest rates to support the country’s sluggish economy last month, officials confirmed they intervened to support the currency against further weakening.

That intervention briefly pushed the yen to 142 against the dollar. The spread between the highest and lowest points intraday was also at its widest since 2016.

In April 1990, the yen traded around 159.8 against the dollar and last breached 160 in December 1986.

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Bond yields higher following market slumps, job data

U.S. Treasury yields traded higher on Tuesday as investors digested Monday’s market retreat and the previous week’s data releases that will guide the Federal Reserve’s policymaking.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 6 basis points, trading at 3.9531% at around 5:30 a.m. ET. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond climbed 7 basis points to 3.9173%. Yields move inversely to prices, and a basis point is equal to 0.01%.

The yield on the 2-year Treasury, the part of the curve most sensitive to Fed policy, was up by 2 basis points to 4.3329%.

The retreat from U.S. bonds appears to be picking up pace as commercial banks, pension funds and foreign governments step away, and the Fed increases the pace at which it plans to sell treasuries from its balance sheet. U.K. bonds are also seeing a dramatic slump as the Bank of England’s emergency move to purchase more gilts failed to calm markets.

Investors will be looking out for the data release on the NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business) Small Business Optimism Index on Tuesday, after the previous week’s release showed an unexpected decline in job openings, slower job growth than forecast and a lower-than-predicted unemployment rate.

The previously released data suggested a continued path of rate hiking for the Fed, which has contributed to recent days’ slides in the stock market.

The New York Fed will release its Survey of Consumer Expectations, which provides a look into consumer’s expectations for overall inflation and prices of food, housing and energy, as well as outlooks on earnings and jobs.

13-week and 26-week bonds are also due for auction Tuesday.

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Bank of England intervenes in bond markets again, warns of ‘material risk’ to UK financial stability

The Bank of England raised rates by 0.5 percentage points Thursday.

Vuk Valcic | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images

LONDON — The Bank of England on Tuesday announced an expansion of its emergency bond-buying operation as it looks to restore order to the country’s chaotic bond market.

The central bank said it will widen its purchases of U.K. government bonds — known as gilts — to include index-linked gilts from Oct. 11 until Oct. 14. Index-linked gilts are bonds where payouts to bondholders are benchmarked in line with the U.K. retail price index.

The move marks the second expansion of the Bank’s extraordinary rescue package in as many days, after it increased the limit for its daily gilt purchases on Monday ahead of the planned end of the purchase scheme on Friday.

The Bank launched its emergency intervention on Sep. 28 after an unprecedented sell-off in long-dated U.K. government bonds threatened to collapse multiple liability driven investment (LDI) funds, widely held by U.K. pension schemes.

“The beginning of this week has seen a further significant repricing of UK government debt, particularly index-linked gilts. Dysfunction in this market, and the prospect of self-reinforcing ‘fire sale’ dynamics pose a material risk to UK financial stability,” the bank said in a statement Tuesday.

U.K. 10-year index-linked gilt yields rose by 64 basis points on Monday, representing a massive 5.5% fall in price. Meanwhile 30-year index-linked gilt prices were down 16% on the day, with yields now at around 1.5%, having been at -1.5% just six months ago. Yields move inversely to prices.

Moves of this magnitude are highly unusual in developed world sovereign bond markets.

“These additional operations will act as a further backstop to restore orderly market conditions by temporarily absorbing selling of index-linked gilts in excess of market intermediation capacity,” the Bank said Tuesday.

“As with the conventional gilt purchase operations, these additional index-linked gilt purchases will be time-limited and fully indemnified by HM Treasury.”

On Monday, the Bank set the upper limit of its daily gilt purchases at £10 billion ($11 billion), of which up to £5 billion will be allocated to conventional gilts and £5 billion to index-linked gilts.

The size of auctions will remain under review, the Bank said, and all purchases will be “unwound in a smooth and orderly fashion once risks to market functioning are judged to have subsided.”

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U.S. should pump more oil to avert war-level energy crisis: JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon

Dimon said in June that he was preparing the bank for an economic “hurricane” caused by the Federal Reserve and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Monday that the U.S. should forge ahead in pumping more oil and gas to help alleviate the global energy crisis, likening the situation to a national security risk of war-level proportions.

Speaking to CNBC, Dimon dubbed the crisis “pretty predictable” — occurring as it has from Europe’s historic overdependence on Russian energy — and urged Western allies to support the U.S. in taking a lead role in international energy security.

“In my view, America should have been pumping more oil and gas and it should have been supported,” Dimon told CNBC’s Julianna Tatelbaum at the JPM Techstars conference in London.

“America needs to play a real leadership role. America is the swing producer, not Saudi Arabia. We should have gotten that right starting in March,” he continued, referring to the onset of the energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

This should be treated almost as a matter of war at this point, nothing short of that.

Jamie Dimon

CEO, JPMorgan Chase

Europe — once a major importer of Russian energy, relying on the country for up to 45% of its natural gas needs — has been at the forefront of that crisis; facing higher prices and dwindling supply as a result of sanctions levied against the Kremlin.

And while EU nations have hit targets to shore up gas supplies over the coming winter months, Dimon said leaders should now be looking ahead to future energy security concerns.

“We have a longer-term problem now, which is the world is not producing enough oil and gas to reduce coal, make the transition [to green energy], produce security for people,” he said.

“I would put it in the critical category. This should be treated almost as a matter of war at this point, nothing short of that,” he added.

‘It’s Pearl Harbor’

Referring to the war in Ukraine more broadly, Dimon dubbed it an attack of similar magnitude to that of Pearl Harbor or the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

“It’s Pearl Harbor, it’s Czechoslovakia, and it’s really an attack on the Western world,” he said.

However, the CEO said it also presented an opportunity for the West to “get its act together” and defend its values in the face of autocratic regimes.

“The autocratic world thinks that the Western world is a little lazy and incompetent — and there’s a little bit of truth to that,” said Dimon.

“This is the chance to get our act together and to solidify the Western, free, democratic, capitalist, free people, free movements, freedom of speech, free religion for the next century,” he continued.

“Because if we don’t get this one right, that kind of chaos you can see around the world for the next 50 years.”

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Bank of England strengthens emergency stimulus to help ease market turmoil

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has said that central bank independence “is critically important.”

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LONDON — The Bank of England on Monday announced further measures to ensure financial stability in the U.K., building on its intervention in the long-dated bond market.

The Bank’s Financial Stability Committee on Sep. 28 announced a two-week emergency purchase program for long-dated U.K. government bonds — known as “gilts” — to restore order to the markets and protect liability driven investment (LDI) funds from imminent collapse.

The central bank announced on Monday that it would introduce further measures to ensure an “orderly end” to its purchase scheme on Oct. 14, including increasing the size of its daily auctions to allow headroom for gilt purchases ahead of Friday’s deadline.

“To date, the Bank has carried out 8 daily auctions, offering to buy up to £40 billion, and has made around £5 billion of bond purchases. The Bank is prepared to deploy this unused capacity to increase the maximum size of the remaining five auctions above the current level of up to £5 billion in each auction,” the Bank said in Monday’s announcement.

The auction limit will be confirmed each morning at 9 a.m. local time, with Monday’s set at £10 billion ($11 billion).

The Bank will also launch a Temporary Expanded Collateral Repo Facility (TECRF), which will allow banks to ease liquidity pressures on client funds embroiled in recent market volatility. Following last month’s unprecedented spike in gilt yields, LDIs — which hold substantial quantities of gilts and are owned predominantly by final salary pension schemes — were receiving margin calls from lenders.

A margin call is a demand from brokers to increase equity in an account when its value falls below the broker’s required amount.

The TECRF will enable banks to run what the Bank called “liquidity insurance operations,” which will last beyond Friday’s deadline and ease pressures on client LDI funds.

“Under these operations, the Bank will accept collateral eligible under the Sterling Monetary Framework (SMF), including index linked gilts, and also a wider range of collateral than normally eligible under the SMF, such as corporate bond collateral,” the Bank said.

Thirdly, the Bank said it would be ready to use its regular Indexed Long Term Repo operations each Tuesday — which allow market participants to borrow BOE cash reserves for six months in exchange for less liquid assets — to further ease liquidity pressures on LDI funds.

“This permanent facility will provide additional liquidity to banks against SMF eligible collateral, including index linked gilts, and so support their lending to LDI counterparties,” the Bank said.

“Liquidity is also available through the Bank’s new permanent Short Term Repo facility, launched last week, which offers an unlimited quantity of reserves at Bank Rate each Thursday.”

This is a breaking news story, please check back later for more.

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Britain’s shadow banking system is raising serious concerns after bond market storm

Analysts are concerned about a knock-on effect to the U.K.’s shadow banking sector in the event of a sudden rise in interest rates.

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LONDON — After last week’s chaos in British bond markets following the government’s Sep. 23 “mini-budget,” analysts are sounding the alarm on the country’s shadow banking sector.

The Bank of England was forced to intervene in the long-dated bond market after a steep sell-off of U.K. government bonds — known as “gilts” — threatened the country’s financial stability.

The panic was focused in particular on pension funds, which hold substantial amounts of gilts, while a sudden rise in interest rate expectations also caused chaos in the mortgage market.

While the central bank’s intervention offered some fragile stability to the British pound and bond markets, analysts have flagged lingering stability risks in the country’s shadow banking sector — financial institutions acting as lenders or intermediaries outside the traditional banking sector.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose administration introduced a rescue package for Britain’s banks during the 2008 financial crisis, told BBC Radio Wednesday that U.K. regulators would need to tighten their supervision of the shadow banks.

“I do fear that as inflation hits and interest rates rise, there will be a number of companies, a number of organizations that will be in grave difficulty, so I don’t think this crisis is over because the pension funds have been rescued last week,” Brown said.

“I do think there’s got to be eternal vigilance about what has happened to what is called the shadow banking sector, and I do fear that there could be further crises to come.”

Global markets took heart in recent sessions from weakening economic data, which is seen as reducing the likelihood that central banks will be forced to tighten monetary policy more aggressively in order to rein in sky-high inflation.

Edmund Harriss, chief investment officer at Guinness Global Investors, told CNBC Wednesday that while inflation will be tempered by the decline in demand and impact of higher interest rates on household incomes and spending power, the danger is a “grinding and extension of weakening demand.”

The U.S. Federal Reserve has reiterated that it will continue raising interest rates until inflation is under control, and Harriss suggested that month-on-month inflation prints of more than 0.2% will be viewed negatively by the central bank, driving more aggressive monetary policy tightening.

Harriss suggested that sudden, unexpected changes to rates where leverage has built up in “darker corners of the market” during the previous period of ultra-low rates could expose areas of “fundamental instability.”

“When going back to the pension funds issue in the U.K., it was the requirement of pension funds to meet long-term liabilities through their holdings of gilts, to get the cash flows coming through, but ultra-low rates meant they weren’t getting the returns, and so they applied swaps over the top — that’s the leverage to get those returns,” he said.

“Non-bank financial institutions, the issue there is likely to be access to funding. If your business is built upon short-term funding and one step back, the lending institutions are having to tighten their belts, tighten credit conditions and so forth, and start to move towards a preservation of capital, then the people that are going to be starved are those that require the most from short-term funding.”

Harriss suggested that the U.K. is not there yet, however, for there is still ample liquidity in the system for now.

“Money will become more expensive, but it is the availability of money that is when you find sort of a crunch point,” he added.

The greater the debt held by non-banking institutions, such as hedge funds, insurers and pension funds, the higher the risk of a ripple effect through the financial system. The capital requirements of shadow banks is often set by counterparties they deal with, rather than regulators, as is the case with traditional banks.

This means that when rates are low and there is an abundance of liquidity in the system, these collateral requirements are often set quite low, meaning non-banks need to post substantial collateral very suddenly when markets head south.

Pension funds triggered the Bank of England’s action last week, with some beginning to receive margin calls due to the plunge in gilt values. A margin call is a demand from brokers to increase equity in an account when its value falls below the broker’s required amount.

Sean Corrigan, director of Cantillon Consulting, told CNBC Friday that pension funds themselves were in fairly strong capital positions due to higher interest rates.

“They’re actually now ahead of funding on the actuarial basis for the first time in I think five or six years. They clearly had a margin problem, but who is the one who’s thinly margined?” he said.

“It’s the counterparties who’ve passed it on and shuffled it around themselves. If there is an issue, maybe we’re not looking at the right part of the building that’s in danger of falling down.”

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Treasury yields tumble for a second day, with 10-year rate below 3.6%

Treasury yields fell across the board for a second day Tuesday as traders weigh actions from central banks going forward.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury was down 6 basis points to 3.587%, after having surpassed the 4% mark last week. The yield on the policy-sensitive 2-year Treasury fell 5 basis points to 4.045%.

Yields and prices move in opposite directions and one basis point equals 0.01%.

The moves appeared to be helping the stock market, as futures traded sharply higher Tuesday. Stocks also rallied Monday.

Markets also continued to absorb the unexpected decline of the U.S. Purchasing Managers’ Index data for the manufacturing sector, which measures factory activity.

That comes as the Federal Reserve maintains a hawkish tone about interest rates hikes, with speakers from the central bank emphasizing that lowering persistent inflation is a top priority for them.

Various Fed speakers are due to make remarks on Tuesday, which traders will pay close attention to in light of growing fears of a recession brought on by rate hikes being implemented too quickly.

Tuesday will also bring insights into the labor market as job openings data for August is released.  

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Credit Suisse is not about to cause a Lehman moment, economist Sri-Kumar says

Worries are mounting over Credit Suisse’s financial health — but that doesn’t mean markets are headed toward a “Lehman moment,” said the president of Sri-Kumar Global Strategies.

“I think the Federal Reserve is going to have to face the consequences of a credit event” if it were to occur, Komal Sri-Kumar told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday. “Something is going to break.”

“This may or may not be a Lehman moment,” he said, referring to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, which triggered a string of big Wall Street bailouts and a subsequent financial crisis.

Over the weekend, several media outlets reported that Credit Suisse sought to assuage investors’ concerns over its financial health — the Swiss bank reportedly contacted its biggest clients after its credit default swaps rose sharply.

CDSs are essentially insurance bets against defaults and a credit event refers to a negative and sudden change in the borrower’s ability to repay its debt.

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A long-time critic of the Fed’s approach to the rise of prices, Sri-Kumar said the latest events surrounding Credit Suisse shows the “real danger of having miscalculated inflation for such a long time.”

“They are trying to make up for it by doing everything in a hurry,” he said, referring to the Fed’s continued hawkish policy and pledge to continue hiking interest rates to tamp down on inflation.

In the Fed’s latest monetary policy meeting in September, the central bank raised its benchmark rate by three-quarters of a percentage point and indicated it will keep raising rates well above the current level.

Sri-Kumar said such attempts at controlling inflation is dangerous for markets worldwide.

“It carries an enormous amount of risk to the global system in terms of what the various central banks are doing,” he said.

The latest reports of Credit Suisse’s actions to calm concerned investors could point to an eventual shift in the Fed’s direction, said John Vail, chief global strategist at Nikko Asset Management.

“The silver lining at end of this period, is the fact that central banks will probably start to relent some time as both inflation is down and financial conditions worsen dramatically,” he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” Monday.

“I don’t think it’s the end of the world, but it could get scary for the next quarter or so,” he said.

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Is the UK now a buy? Analysts weigh in after market meltdown

A security guard stands outside the London Stock Exchange building on December 29, 2020.

Tolga Akmen | AFP via Getty Images

U.K. bond markets and the pound went into freefall this week as investors balked at the new government’s fiscal policy announcements, and some analysts believe opportunities are arising.

The Bank of England on Wednesday was forced to intervene in the bond market with a temporary purchase program, as the capitulation of long-dated gilt prices threatened pension funds and mortgages, posing what the central bank deemed a material risk to financial stability.

U.K. bond yields are on course for their sharpest monthly incline since at least 1957, while the pound fell to an all-time low against the dollar on Monday.

Viraj Patel, senior strategist at Vanda Research, told CNBC on Wednesday ahead of the announcement that the next few weeks would be critical for investors assessing whether to go back into U.K. markets, but he would not consider it yet.

“The pound six days ago was not an issue for me. I was looking at a range of other currencies as being more dislocated in markets right now,” Patel said.

He added that the fall in the currency and British bonds represented a vote of no confidence in the government’s fiscal package, and concern about where sustainable growth is going to come from in an environment of high and rising short-term interest rates.

“I think some of these doomsday fears are being somewhat overblown to some extent, but I don’t think anyone wants to step in right now and buy undervalued U.K. assets at this point,” he said.

“We could have a different conversation in three months because the pound is extremely cheap, but I think that it’s just one of those things where it’s the storm before the calm.”

The U.K. stock market has also sold off in recent sessions, though not to any deeper extent than other markets across Europe amid a broad global pullback for stocks, as fears of more aggressive monetary policy tightening from central banks and slowing growth force investors to the sidelines.

Alan Custis, head of U.K. equities at Lazard Asset Management, told CNBC on Thursday that the general sale as a result of the country’s economic turmoil “does in a way throw up some opportunities” for British blue chips with overseas earnings who benefit from a falling pound.

Stock analysts watching gilts closely

British long-dated bonds – known as “gilts” – have seen historic levels of volatility in recent days, with prices rallying from their initial collapse on the back of the Bank of England’s announcement that it would buy long-dated bonds for two weeks and delay next week’s scheduled gilt sales until Oct. 31.

Custis said stock analysts were closely watching the volatility in gilt markets for indications as to where interest rates are likely to go.

“The market is now discounting interest rates going up towards 6%. Before this situation last week, we were probably thinking 3.75, maybe 3.5% would be the peak, inflation peaking maybe October or November this year at around 11%. Now clearly, that’s been thrown out, because we don’t know where sterling is going to go, how inflationary a weak sterling could be for the economy,” Custis said.

“Stability in the gilt market is very important for those reasons, because it can give us some sense as to where interest rates may ultimately land, and obviously that will have a big impact on mortgage rates and consumer spending, so it’s all linked in, so yes, we watch the gilt market just as much as we watch the equity market.”

Britain’s blue-chip FTSE 100 is renowned for its high dividend yields for investors, but with bond yields soaring, the attractiveness of these kinds of stocks is diminished, Custis acknowledged, but he highlighted that 45% of the dividends paid by companies on the index are paid in dollars, which insulates it to a certain extent.

This would also help explain why Britain’s mid-cap FTSE 250 index has had a tougher run in light of the country’s economic chaos and currency collapse than its large-cap cousin.

“When we saw it with the real estate companies over the first couple of days of this week, (capitalization) rates in real estate stocks are four and a half percent – if you’ve got interest rates at 6%, it’s very difficult for real estate stocks to look attractive.”

Central to the outlook in the near future, analysts have suggested, is for Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng to re-establish credibility, after taking the rare step of omitting forecasts from Britain’s independent Office for Budget Responsibility prior to Friday’s controversial announcements.

Kwarteng has promised a more detailed and costed implementation plan on Nov. 23, while the Bank of England meets on Nov. 3 to appraise the impact of the fiscal announcements and determine the scale of its next interest rate hike.

“I think we need to see the OBR, the Bank of England and the Chancellor come together and again reinforce the financial prudence, the tramlines, the aim to reduce debt-to-GDP numbers – albeit we’re in quite a strong position at the moment,” Custis said, adding that a joint statement in November would be a positive signal for markets.

Although some analysts have highlighted that the U.K. retains strong fiscal fundamentals and support barriers for bonds and the currency, many are reluctant to jump back in until the smoke clears.

Seema Shah, senior global investment strategist at Principal Global Investors, said investors were assessing whether the U.K. still holds up as an attractive long-term investment destination alongside other developed economies.

“Whereas for the U.S., I think it’s a resounding yes over the next 10 years – equities will be higher than where they are today,” she told CNBC on Wednesday.

“For the U.K., it’s probably a bigger question of how much higher they’re going to be, and do we really believe in the U.K. going forward as somewhere we want to be placing our money?”

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