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Just about 10 past 11, mainland Spain, and as someone once said, I haven't gone away, you know
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So what we're going to do in this hour on a Monday, kind of call it the business hour
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it means we can continue with a lot of our regular guests from when I was doing mornings
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and we do it between 10 and 11. And if we're calling it the business hour, who's more business like than Christina Brady
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from Black Tower Financial Management? be on the line. Good morning. Good morning. I was just saying to you before we came on that
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normally I'd have had two hours to warm up because you'd be in the last hour of my old show
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But I'm coming in cold here. But fortunately, as people will know, you do a lot of the heavy
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lifting in this hour as far as telling. Oh, I don't know. Mondays is not a good day for me
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It takes me all day to get going. So we'll still do it every fortnight, as we were before
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Yes. Just Mondays at 11 at now. So we were just looking, having a look over
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and we'll come to some stories from the business world in just a while. but the markets
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Now, if we're looking at the stocks, that jumped out at me, that the Futsi's up over 1% at the moment in London
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That's open already, obviously, this morning. Yeah the Futsis getting very near to 8 actually It at 1 It a 7992 spot 37 But the others aren The 400 up as well Yeah but the others in Europe aren
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I mean, Spain's up a bit, but why is this then? What's happened? Actually, the Germany's up
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The French is flat. Yeah. So the markets don't seem to be too worried about any escalation in the Middle East at the moment
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With the attacks, they, you know, they're quite positive because there's been
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no new sort of retaliatory attacks by Israel or Iran. So that's made the oil price has gone down
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Stocks have risen. But if you look at the sterling, sterling euros has fallen under 116
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It's now 115-97. So that has gone down. Yes, that has. It was 117
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It's been around that market. It's gone down, which is, you know, it's quite a lot if you're transferring money
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So that's euro to sterling, yeah, just around the 116 mark, but just below at the moment
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But the markets, no, the Foots has been doing very, very well over the last, or month or so
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All of the markets have in the UK. Remember, the Footsie 100 is the top 100 companies, but they're global companies
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They're just not UK-centric. So you know that gives a false idea that the UK is doing really well when it not They global companies So really you shouldn look too much into that Obviously we got rates rate cuts
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The ECB says it's hopefully going to cut rates in June. That obviously depends on oil prices and the Middle East
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If there's no increase in the tensions in the Middle East, then we should see a rate cut in Europe in June
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the UK possibly June, although the UK inflation figures weren't that good
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but the UK, the Bank of India is talking about UK rates fall into possibly to 4.5 by the end of the year
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Again, that depends on what's happening on inflation. They want it to look good, obviously, the government at the moment
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because the way the UK is going, we're going to have an election in the UK October, January time
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I think it has to be done by January, so it looks like it would be October. So if rates start to come down there, obviously you think that might put a good impression out there for people
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However, what you've got to remember is at the moment in the UK, the tax burden is the highest it ever has been
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And I think that is the same around most of the world at the moment. You know, the tax we're paying is unbelievable on everything
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So you don feel any better off No one does Even if rates really fall you not going to feel anything Inflation has eaten into our buying power We need some deflation I know they hate that word but deflation
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would be nice. We like it. Yeah. People's wages just haven't kept up with it. I think even if you
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get a good salary, you've noticed because it's been eating in so much more nowadays by just the essential
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things like food, heating, everything has gone up. Nothing's gone down. Running your car, etc
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You know, insurance premiums have gone up. It's just, you know, it's not depressing
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If you've got investments, the markets have recovered so much since last year
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If you look at the latter end of last year, beginning of this year, most portfolios are now up
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Obviously, if you talk out investments in 2022, they could have gone down quite a bit, but they are going in the right direction
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most funds are up. The UK is still down. I think the UK is because of the political uncertainty
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We don't know. Obviously, Labour are going to get in looks like it, but by what majority
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What are their plans? Are they going to raise corporation tax? Are they going to increase inheritance tax
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You know, there's the think tank in the UK that covers pensions
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It's called IFS Research. And they're saying that you should stop
