Introduction Savers and investors will not shed many tears for the end of 2022. A year that was beset by inflation and rising interest rates meant only three of the major stock markets we report on made gains in the year. That was how we started the final Stock Market Bulletin of last year. So […]
Latest News from Radcliffe Cooper
This section is regularly updated to bring you news of important developments in financial planning matters.
If you want answers to any questions, chances are you simply pick up your phone and look online. But there are many questions in life that are simply too big for the internet to answer, ones that require specialist knowledge, insight and expertise. For example, you can’t just Google how you should personally manage your […]
So Christmas is over for another year. There were plenty of anecdotal stories of how much extra Christmas dinner cost this year: the meat, the wine, even the Christmas crackers – everything seemed to cost more. But let’s forget the anecdotal and concentrate on the numbers, which suggest that fresh food inflation rose at a […]
Money worries can have a devastating impact on a person’s life, causing untold stress and heartache day after day. So it’s really important that you’re not left feeling as if your finances are like a runaway juggernaut: out of control. Otherwise, you leave yourself vulnerable to a host of further financial problems, from growing debt […]
Overall Market Backdrop, January On 19th January, the U.S. government hit its borrowing ceiling of $31.4 trillion (as voted for back in December 2021 in Congress), raising concerns that any form of default would cause catastrophic effects on both domestic and global economies. Global equity markets started the year strongly, with the S&P 500 climbing […]
Introduction As 2022 drew to a close, there was a mixed picture worldwide as major economies sought to respond to soaring energy prices, rising living costs and the continuing impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In our first round-up of the year, we look at where we left off in 2022 all across the world… […]
The Chancellor’s decision to protect the state pension triple lock was one of the most headline-grabbing aspects of the recent Budget. But what exactly is the triple lock and what does it mean? In short, it’s a mechanism designed to make sure the state pension doesn’t lose value, so it will go up by whichever […]
It’s a term we’ve heard a lot recently, so let’s take a close look at what open banking actually is, and how many people know about it. Open banking means allowing third-party financial services providers, such as budgeting apps, to access a person’s banking information, like their payment history and previous transactions. These services have […]
As we all know, interest rates have been steadily rising. Higher interest rates equal higher mortgage rates, which means less money for householders to spend. Then came the Autumn Statement. Tax thresholds frozen equals more to pay in taxes equals less to spend in the shops. The situation has been much the same in the […]
Overall Market Backdrop, December On Wednesday 21st December, it was announced that UK government borrowing hit £22bn for November, nearly three times the £8.1bn reached in the same month last year. UK house prices fell for the fourth consecutive month in December, marking the longest contraction since the 2008 financial crisis, as rising interest rates […]