020 7898 0500The US housing market strengthened further in January as existing sales rose 3.3%, hitting a 10-year high as buyers shrugged off higher prices and mortgage rates. The US stock market has continued to go on to fresh highs while oil prices are continuing their upward movement.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) minutes have indicated that an interest rate hike could come very soon, but they didn’t help push the current market pricing at 25% probability of a rate hike as the comments seemed to lack urgency. Comments from the new US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, suggested that any policy changes are unlikely to have any influence until the latter part of the year. Investors were hoping that there would have been more progress by now on US tax reform and public spending but neither seem to be on the immediate agenda.
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