Federal Reserve

Janet Yellen will be nominated as the first female Federal Reserve chairman later today, in a ceremony attended by Barack Obama and current chair Ben Bernanke.

Multi-asset managers are raising cash levels and adding to government bonds as fears over the US economy spook investors.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has warned failure to raise the debt ceiling could be far worse than the current US government shutdown.

What a difference a year makes. Last autumn, you may recall, we were all holding our heads in our hands, lamenting the sorry state of the UK economy.

Now the world economy is recovering, market attention has moved on from competing strategies to deal with the debt crisis.

ONE TO WATCH

A surprise delay in the US Federal Reserve's plans to wind down its QE programme may continue into 2014, fund managers have suggested.

UK Equities

The Federal Reserve has been accused of ‘making policy on the fly' after it opted not to taper its quantitative easing programme at its monthly meeting yesterday.

The FTSE has jumped as much as 1.5% after the US Federal Reserve came yesterday indicated it has no plans to cut back on its quantitative easing programme at present.