Friday Briefing: United in confusion

Recession, yes or no?

This morning, we awoke to the results of a trio of by-elections with three different results but a general direction of travel.

Labour and the Lib Dems took a seat each from the Conservatives, both with a hefty swing, and while the Conservatives held onto one seat, their majority was cut from 7,210 to 495 votes. A lack of ambition is not equal to realism This general air of ‘we know something's happening but we're not quite sure what it will look like' continues to permeate financial markets, and is perhaps best summed up by this recent Bloomberg survey. A lack of certainty can be found widely across the industry, which was also rather helpfully detailed in this month's fund manager surveys from the Ban...