AHR Weekly Market Update - Monday 5th February
On this week’s AHR Market review.Central bank decisions and major corporate earnings announcements were under the spotlight during the week as equity markets continued their strong start to the year.On Wednesday the US Federal Reserve’s policy-setting committee kept benchmark interest rates in the 5.25%-5.50% range and announced that rate cuts would not be appropriate until there is "greater confidence that inflation is moving" towards the central bank's 2% target.The Bank of England (BoE) also held its key interest rate steady at an almost 16-year high of 5.25% but appeared to signal that it would consider lowering it for the first time since consumer price inflation accelerated after the coronavirus pandemic.While the Fed rate announcement produced no surprises, that wasn't the case for the latest US jobs report. The US economy added 353,000 payrolls in January, double the consensus estimate.In a busy week, some of the world’s largest companies announced their fourth-quarter earnings reports, with several releases from heavily weighted tech giants driving movements in the major benchmarks.US equities rose over 1% for the week, marking the 13th positive result out of the past 14 weeks.That’s all for this week’s AHR Weekly Podcast. Thank you for listening and for further investment insights head over to ahrprivatewealth.com.