Friday Briefing: Not quite a Mini Budget 2.0 but definitely a taste of it

Friday Briefing

Eve Maddock-Jones
clock • 4 min read

“It’s fair to ask whether Rachel Reeves’ maiden Budget could cause similar problems,” said Laith Khalaf head of investment analysis at AJ Bell, aligning the chancellor’s first fiscal moment to the chaotic Mini Budget she was desperately trying to avoid.

"The answer is probably, and hopefully, not," Khalaf added, but it's a fair parallel to make. Wednesday (30 October) saw the contents of the long-awaited and highly speculated Autumn Budget revealed, with markets at first, letting out a sigh of relief that the anxiety it had whipped up was unwarranted. In the hours after Reeves left the despatch box, Michael Browne, chief investment officer at Martin Currie, part of Franklin Templeton, noted: "The markets are happy. Sterling has steadied after selling off […] and the FTSE 250 has risen sharply, up 1.6% and AIM [is] up over 3%." UK ...

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