Weekly outlook: Chancellor to unveil UK spring budget

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18 March 2022

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Portfolio Adviser

Monday 21 March

– Trading statement from SThree
– Rightmove UK house price index
– In Asia, quarterly results from Pinduoduo and Tencent Music
– In the US, quarterly results from Nike

Tuesday 22 March

– Full-year results from Wood Group, Kingfisher, Sabre Insurance and Harworth
– First-half results from Softcat and Oxford Nanopore
– Japanese inflation
– UK Government borrowing
– US producer price inflation
– In Asia, quarterly results from Xiaomi
– In the US, quarterly results from Adobe

Wednesday 23 March

– Full-year results from Ultra Electronics, Dignity and Henry Boot
– Trading statement from Halma
– UK inflation figures
– UK spring statement from the chancellor of the Exchequer
– US new homes sales
– US oil inventories
– In Asia, quarterly results from Tencent, Apple-supplier Foxconn and Volvo-owner Geely Automobile
– In the US, quarterly results from General Mills

“Events in Ukraine, and – from the very narrow perspective of financial markets – the war’s effect upon commodity prices in particular continue to grab the headlines and the conflict is likely to overshadow pretty much anything else,” said Russ Mould, AJ Bell investment director, and Danni Hewson, financial analyst.

“But investors will no doubt keep an eye on the spring statement from chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak on Wednesday 23 March, which is also the scheduled release date of February’s inflation figures here in the UK.

“The Bank of England has a target of keeping inflation at around 2% and after a good decade of undershooting that goal, the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street is faced with a different challenge, namely how to rein it in.”

Mould and Hewson added: “This requires a tricky balancing act. If the Bank of England moves interest rates up too far, too fast, then the heavily indebted UK economy could quickly hit the buffers. If it moves too slowly, the inflation could curb the real-terms spending power of workers’ wages and hit corporate profit margins, impacting the willingness and ability of consumers to spend and companies to hire and invest.”

Hargreaves Lansdown senior investment and markets analyst Susannah Streeter described the inflation reading for February as “a bit like testing the temperature of a hot bath before a few more kettles of boiling water are poured in”.

“It’s expected that inflation will have heated up again, past the 5.5% recorded for January, but the commodity chaos unleashed by the invasion of Ukraine won’t fully show up. In the weeks to come there will also be unwelcome bills landing on mats, with higher energy tariffs another unwelcome driver of inflation which is expected to push the headline rate to 8% or more.

“With inflation marching upwards, the Bank of England will also be expected to keep its tightening on track, with a fresh rate hike expected in May pushing up the cost of borrowing in an attempt to push down demand.”