Thanks for joining me. Jeremy Hunt has been accused of failing to spread “fairy dust” on his Budget by a former chief economist at the Bank of England.
Andrew Haldane said that the chaos caused by the Truss mini-Budget was now far enough away in the past for the Chancellor to have tried to have focused more on increasing growth “even if it were at the expense of a bit more borrowing”.
Five things to start your day
1) Revealed: the winners and losers of Jeremy Hunt’s Budget | Telegraph Money outlines whether the Chancellor has left you better or worse off
2) US investor targets Britain’s ‘nuclear triangle’ for mini-nuke factory | Export of reactors built in the UK could be worth £4bn annually
3) Time is running out for Tories to secure trade deal with India, warns billionaire Modi ally | Tycoon Sunil Mittal says Labour are waiting in the wings as elections loom
4) John Lewis unveils record pay rise amid job cuts backlash | Retailer plans to slash redundancy packages to free up cash for wage increases
5) AstraZeneca to build £450m vaccine hub in Liverpool in boost for UK | Move comes as rival pharma giant GSK sounds alarm over soaring cost of operating in UK
What happened overnight
Asian shares were trading mixed, after Wall Street recovered some losses from the day before after the Federal Reserve chairman’s comments that interest rates will likely fall this year.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 momentarily reached a record high in early trading but slipped later to finish at 39,598.71, down 1.2pc.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose nearly 0.4pc to 7,763.70. South Korea’s Kospi added 0.2pc to 2,645.62.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 1pc to 16,269.12, while the Shanghai Composite declined 0.3pc to 3,031.72.
Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, said again that cuts to interest rates may be coming this year, but that the Fed needs more data showing inflation is cooling before it will act.
The S&P 500 rose 26.11 points, or 0.5pc, to 5,104.76. The benchmark index fell 1pc a day prior.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 75.86 points, or 0.2pc, to 38,661.05. The Nasdaq composite rose 91.95, or 0.6pc, to 16,031.54.
