FTSE closes flat but Wall Street bounces back as November rally looks to regain momentum

• That’s it from us.

  But our US team has you covered with the latest moving stocks across the pond in their markets blog.

• US Consumer confidence ticks higher in November

  New data out from The Conference Board on Tuesday showed consumer confidence increased in November. Yahoo Finance’s Alexandra Canal writes:

  The Conference Board’s index jumped to 102.0 in November, up from a downwardly revised 99.1 in October. Average 12-month inflation expectations retreated back to 5.7% after a one-month uptick to 5.9%.

  “Consumer confidence increased in November, following three consecutive months of decline,” Dana Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board, said in a news release. “This improvement reflected a recovery in the ‘Expectations Index,’ while the ‘Present Situation Index’ was largely unchanged.”

  Despite the improvement, however, the ‘Expectations Index’ remained below 80 for a third consecutive month—a level that historically signals a recession within the next year.

  Although consumer fears of an impending recession retreated slightly, hitting the lowest levels seen this year, two-thirds of consumers surveyed in November still believe a recession to be “somewhat” or “very likely” to occur over the next 12 months, according to The Conference Board.

• BoE’s Haskel: Interest rates will stay higher longer than expected

  

  Photo: Reuters

  There is no prospect the Bank of England will loosen monetary policy anytime soon as interest rates need to be “higher rates for longer ” to bring down inflation, policymaker Jonathan Haskel said.

  In a speech being given to the University of Warwick today, Haskel states clearly that the current outlook does not suggest there is scope for moderation in rates anytime soon.

  “The labour market is still historically tight. At current rates of change it would take at least a year to fall back to average pre-pandemic tightness,” Haskel said in a text copy of a speech he was due to make later.

  “This will need higher rates for longer to get inflation sustainably to target. This is why I have been voting for higher rates at recent meetings,” he said.

  Money markets are indicating that the Bank will cut rates from 5.25% to 5% by next August, with at least one more cut before the end of next year.

• Barclays (BARC.L) is cutting 900 jobs in its UK business as it looks to slash costs in a “disgraceful” pre-Christmas move, trade union Unite has said.

  Unite said the jobs would go across a number of back-office divisions, including compliance, finance, legal, policy, IT and risk. Affected staff were told at lunchtime on Tuesday, according to the union.

  Barclays did not confirm numbers, but said it was taking actions to cut its workforce “as management layers are reduced and the group improves its technology and automation capabilities”.

• A much-quoted statistic is that the average person has 11 different jobs over the course of their working life so there’s a chance you’ve accumulated a number of pensions during that time.

  They all play a part in helping you build a decent retirement income but if you lose track of one you could be leaving yourself thousands of pounds worse off in retirement.

  It can happen very easily. You may move house and not update your contact details with your pension provider and before you know it you’ve lost track.

  Research from the Pensions Policy Institute published last year estimated there were 2.8 million lost pensions worth an average of £9,470 each.

  Read the full story here

• Rolls-Royce (RR.L) — Shares in Rolls-Royce hit a four-year high after the UK engineering company set out new targets for operating profit. The company now has a medium-term target to deliver operating profits between £2.5bn ($3.16bn) and £2.8bn.

  Novartis (NVS) — Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis lifted its sales growth guidance to 5% per year until 2027 after what it called “progress” in delivering its pure-play strategy.

  EasyJet (EZJ.L) — Budget airline easyJet revealed it swung to an annual profit after a record summer. The group reported pre-tax profits of £432m for the year to 30 September, against losses of £208m the previous year.

  Barclays (BARC.L) — Shares in Barclays were lower amid reports that the lender is in talks to buy a £3bn mortgage book from Metro Bank (MTRO.L) and news that it is exploring plans to drop thousands of investment banking clients.

  Read the full story here

• Former Wilko chair Lisa Wilkinson has said that Liz Truss’ mini-budget was one of the contributing factors that led to the collapse of the retailer.

  Speaking to MPs on the Business and Trade Committee, she said the company was in the middle of negotiating a new loan arrangement when the mini-budget caused interest rates to soar.

  “We were about to enter into secured lending arrangements with Macquarie when the 2022 mini-budget happened,” she said.

  “Literally we were in the midst of that, and at that point the interest terms on that loan were hiked massively and that became infeasible. So, that was a contributor.”

• 

  Photo: Reuters

  Wilko had been flagging “challenging trading positions” since 2010 with its union and wanted to move away from the idea of it as a discount retailer, MPs have been told.

  “We’ve got correspondence between ourselves and Wilko where they identify a challenging trading position from about 2010,” Nadine Houghton, national officer at the GMB union, told the Business and Trade Committee.

  “They identify that the discount retailers are an issue.”

  She added that her union does not believe the collapse of Wilko was inevitable.

  “We think that actually, what brought the collapse was weak leadership, and a failure of Wilko to adapt to a changing market,” she said.

• Bank of England (BoE) deputy governor Dave Ramsden has warned that interest rates will need to remain high for some time to defeat price increases as the challenges facing UK inflation are “becoming much more home grown”

  Dave Ramsden said prices could keep rising at a fast pace as a result of the services sector, where inflation has been “much stickier”, Reuters reported.

  Speaking at a central bank conference in Hong Kong, he said: “We think that monetary policy is likely to need to be restrictive for an extended period of time,” he said. “And we’ve communicated that it will need to be sufficiently restrictive for sufficiently long to get inflation back to the 2% target.”

• UK property hunters are paying an average of £18,000 less than asking price, according to new data, as mortgage rates hit demand and an increase in supply bolsters negotiating power for house hunters.

  This rate of discount to asking price is now at a five-year high, hitting 5.5% for sales in the first half of November compared to a 3.4% average discount for the first six months of 2023, according to Zoopla’s monthly House Price Index.

  This is being keenly felt in the south of England where the average discount to the asking price for sales is 6.1% in London and the South East – equating to a total reduction of £25,000 off the asking price, the monitor found.

  Read the full story here

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