Investment Management Blog - Montague Capital

We thought rates were coming down……
Sometimes it is legitimate to question the purpose and effectiveness of interest rate cuts.  Yesterday, despite what the Bank of England has delivered following the start of the credit crunch, Nationwide increased its mortgage rate to new borrowers by 0.2%.  Nationwide made a very poor fist of explaining to the […]

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In the UK……
As for the timing of the next cut in UK interest rates, the MPC minutes published this week went on to suggest that economic activity was not slowing down quite as fast as had been expected a month ago.  The MPC correctly anticipated both elevated pricing pressures (verified by this week’s 2.5% CPI […]

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Let’s talk budget…….
Having flopped dismally in his pre-budget statement last Autumn, Alastair Darling’s first full-dress budget on Wednesday once again singularly failed to impress the examiners. To judge by Darling’s style of delivery, which made Gordon Brown’s witty and humorous approach when he was Chancellor look like Ben Elton at the end of a […]

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The Fed acts yet again………….
US Federal Reserve made US$200bn of new liquidity available yesterday by offering to lend mainstream banks (and now brokers and dealers too) US Treasury bills for a 28-day period against a laxer definition of qualifying collateral. A further US$50bn-odd was also extended by the European Central Bank, the Swiss National […]

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