“Treasury yields and dollar rise as investors assess interest rate outlook”

An independent (financial adviser’s) view

All the fund manager presentations are focusing, not on interest rates, but they’re controlling parent, bond yields. This is what the markets (ie the guys who are the main recipients of bankers’ bonuses) think interest rates are likely to be sooner and often very much later. So if you have a ‘bond’, a loan to a company or government, which says it will pay 4% a year for 5 years, and you think rates will be, say, 5%, that 4% bond will be worth less than it’s face value. And vice verse. Currently, they think they’re going to be higher for longer; which means bond yields are up; which isn’t desperately good news. That’s very short term not good news however, and any small indication that inflation is coming down can (and will) change everything very quickly. Which is why the long-term is all.

Read more here

“HMRC: ‘digitalising tax process could close gap’”

“HMRC: ‘digitalising tax process could close gap’”

You, like a majority of both taxpayers and accountants, may have been sweating and cursing over a keyboard last week to submit a last-minute tax return. Many by the end of that accursed process will have been shouting ‘bring back paper!’, a vain and pointless hope, I’m afraid.