INSIGHT

Setting out firm predictions for the year ahead is always something of a mug’s game. So, instead of making some grand calls for the year ahead, Spotlight will end the year by setting out five big questions for 2026.

Given how much of this year’s budget had been pre-briefed to the media or trailed in advance, there were few surprises in the Chancellor’s speech. This month’s spotlight runs through the big picture takeaways in 8 charts.

Charity scandals and widespread governance failure across the third sector are putting trustees, philanthropists and beneficiaries at risk.

The International Monetary Fund publishes two editions of the World Economic Outlook each year. The titles alone are useful indicators. The most recent – released last month – being subtitled “Global Economy in Flux, Prospects Remain Dim”. Hardly the most optimistic of choices.

The Fed Chair’s annual address is one of their key opportunities to communicate with financial markets. The speech often sets the tone for the coming months and provides a helpful steer on what the Fed is thinking. Chairman Powell’s speech was, as ever, interesting.

It is sometimes grimly amusing to look back at the blizzard of year end outlooks released by investment banks, stockbrokers and sell side research houses. December 2024 may only be half a year ago but an awful lot has changed.

April saw the release of the International Monetary Fund’s latest forecasts. On the basis of the IMF’s five year forecasts the 2020s will see the weakest growth amongst the advanced economies as a whole in five decades. And whilst the emerging economy will also slow, relative to the 2010s, it will remain at a much brisker pace.

It is very easy to be gloomy about the British economy. Indeed, Spotlight sounded rather downbeat in the aftermath of March’s budget. But whilst the prospects for the British economy are hardly sparkling, it may be the case that the gloom is now being overdone.

We have discussed the impact on asset prices of the “Trump tango”, but we wanted to explore the US dollar more closely. The two words that have cropped up the most so far when analysing the economic impact of Donald Trump’s second term have been ‘uncertainty’ and ‘tariff’. Indeed, the two have often been used together. It is not difficult to see why.

Last Autumn, at her first budget, Rachel Reeves took a gamble. It has not paid off.

Last Autumn Isabel Schnabel, a member of the European Central Bank’s rate-setting executive committee, made a speech simply entitled “escaping stagnation”.