This weeks financial update from Straight Talk Financial Planning

Monday Musings 29/03/2021

Let’s start with the fun bit, super hamper for the first two readers who can name the company that is listing this week with a name that sounds like the nickname for a kangaroo.

Once again Covid has dominated the news this week with the European Commission, not necessarily European countries, being a bit wobbly on who is responsible for the lag in vaccinations across mainland Europe. Was it our own golden locked super hero or some other malignant force such as politics in the EU. As I am married to a Spaniard, sorry Catalan, I must be careful who I blame but “Rule Britannia”, actually I’m not sure I am allowed to say that anymore. More importantly most pundits agree that the problems across the channel will not impact on the recovery here in the UK. For the first time ever, I told my better half that I want to go clothes shopping!! If other members of my sex- see very woke- feel the same way the high street may well have a boost when it opens. Anyhow the FTSE 100 had a reasonable week moving ahead, as did the FTSE 250. So here is the financial update for this week.

In the USA the economy is growing at over 6%, pretty good, and the FED thinks there will be full employment next year. In spite of this as well as the current relief cheques which have been mailed to hundreds of millions of needy families Mr B is planning another 3-4 trillion package of spending and tax credits over the coming decade. The idea is to stimulate the economy which is a good thing, but it could lead to higher inflation which is a good or bad thing depending which economist you chose to believe. According to Irwin Stelzer in the Sunday Times the cheques landing on people’s doormats are called “stimmie cheques” get it “stimmie cheques”. The Dow Jones and the S&P500 were both in positive territory with the NASDAQ falling away largely due to the bottle neck in the supply of components such as computer chips. No doubt this will be solved as and when Covid is under control.

In the far east the Hang Seng had a difficult week having all of the covid woes of the rest of the world plus the issues caused by China’s even more hard-line position. The NIKKIE fell over the week but this has been a volatile market for many years and will no doubt recover.

So, to the markets

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