Aurelia Butler

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The average asking price for residential properties touched 375,131 pounds ($474,578.23) in the four weeks to mid-May, Rightmove said.However, the 0.8% increase in month-on-month terms represented the weakest rise so far in 2024.Prices were only 0.6% higher when compared with the same period last year.Britain’s housing market slowed last year as higher borrowing costs weighed on the market but it has shown signs of picking up in recent months as falling inflation boosts household incomes and raises the prospect of interest rate cuts.Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s director of property science, said the momentum of the spring selling season was not a sign of a return to strong demand.”The market remains price-sensitive, and with prices reaching new records in the majority of regions and mortgage rates remaining elevated, affordability for many home-buyers is still stretched,” Bannister said.Rightmove said asking prices rose by the most – up 1.3% in annual terms – in the high end of the market.($1 = 0.7905 pounds) More

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan’s weak consumption may heighten, rather than tame, already growing political pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates to slow the yen’s declines blamed for hurting households via higher import costs.Such pressure will likely prod Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda to keep dropping hawkish signals on the policy outlook, but with plenty of caveats to hedge against the chance consumption may take longer than expected to rebound, analysts say.The yen has depreciated by roughly 10% against the dollar so far this year despite the BOJ’s decision in March to end eight years of negative rates, as markets focused on the still-huge divergence between U.S. and Japanese interest rates.Data released on Thursday showed Japan’s economy shrank more than expected in the first quarter, partly as rising living costs from the weak yen hurt consumption. Exports also slumped in a sign of the fading benefits to manufacturers from the weaker currency.The soft readings alone likely won’t force the BOJ to overhaul a steady rate hike plan laid out in April, as policymakers are focusing more on whether consumption will rebound later this year as they project, analysts say.But they will heighten the importance of upcoming data on consumption, wages and service inflation, in gauging the timing of the next rate hike, they say.”The BOJ is likely sticking to the view rising wages will lift consumption. But it will probably wait for second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) data, due out in August, to check whether that’s indeed the case,” said Naomi Muguruma, chief bond strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ (NYSE:MUFG) Morgan Stanley Securities.GRUMBLINGS CONTINUEThe weak yen has become a headache for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida by cooling consumption. Renewed price pressures from import costs are casting doubt on whether Kishida, already suffering from low approval ratings, can meet his pledge to turn inflation-adjusted wages positive in coming months.While the BOJ has ruled out using monetary policy to affect currency moves, rising concern over the demerits of a weak yen has led some government and business executives to call on the central bank to hike interest rates from near-zero levels.Inflation must stay moderate so firms can earn enough to keep raising wages, Masakazu Tokura, head of business lobby Keidanren, told the government’s top economic council on May 10.”Given the risk of the weak yen causing excessive price rises, I hope the government and the BOJ aim to achieve appropriate levels of inflation around 2%,” Tokura told the meeting, where Ueda was also present.Mana Nakazora, a private-sector member of the council, also urged the BOJ to help “moderate downward pressure on the yen” with monetary policy, according to the minutes of the meeting.The discussions followed escalating government pressure that was already forcing the BOJ to modify its dovish policy communication in April that was blamed for triggering further sharp yen falls.After a meeting with Kishida on May 7, Ueda said the BOJ will be “vigilant” to yen moves in setting monetary policy. A day later, he said the BOJ may hike rates if yen falls affect prices significantly.The remarks contrasted with those on April 26, when he said recent yen falls won’t immediate affect inflation – a comment that pushed the yen below 160 to the dollar and triggered suspected yen-buying intervention by the government.While the yen has since recouped some losses to hover around 155, government grumblings continue.Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki told reporters on Tuesday the government and the BOJ must “avoid causing friction” with any policy divergence – remarks administration aides describe as a reminder for the central bank to pay heed to government concerns over the weak yen.”In reality, current yen levels have a big negative impact on people’s livelihood,” a source close to Kishida’s administration told Reuters.In theory, hiking interest rates when the economy is weak makes little sense. The case is somewhat different for Japan, where short-term rates remain stuck around zero despite inflation exceeding the BOJ’s 2% target for two years.A modest hike in nominal interest rates will still keep inflation-adjusted, real borrowing costs deeply negative.Former BOJ executive Eiji Maeda said the BOJ likely won’t raise rates for the sole purpose of slowing the yen’s declines.But he said the impact of yen moves on prices may have become bigger than when Japan was mired in deflation.”From this perspective, the impact a weak yen could have on inflation is important in guiding monetary policy,” said Maeda, who expects the BOJ to hike rates as early as July. More

Required increases in capital for banks like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs meant to ensure they have sufficient buffers to absorb potential losses — would on average be about half as much as originally floated, the Journal added.Top officials from all three agencies involved in the pending capital rules — the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — are still discussing substantive and technical revisions and there is no guarantee that an agreement will be reached, the WSJ reported.The Fed, FDIC and OCC declined to comment on the report.The three bank regulators, led by the Fed, in July last year unveiled a proposal to overhaul how banks with more than $100 billion in assets calculate the cash they must set aside to absorb potential losses.The Basel proposal aims to make banks more resilient to potential losses, lowering the risk of failures or bailouts. Banks say that they are already highly capitalized and the changes are unnecessary.Big U.S. banks have lobbied against the Basel proposal, which they say will force them to overhaul or shut down a range of products and businesses. Goldman Sachs recruited dozens of small business owners to travel to Washington and urge lawmakers to reconsider the proposal, a Reuters review of private Goldman documents, interviews with program participants and public disclosures show. More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets.Broadly speaking, the global backdrop for Asian markets is still bright, with investors confident that the Fed will soon cut U.S. interest rates keeping the dollar, bond yields and volatility in check, and boosting risk assets. But there’s a cloud that shows no sign of lifting: China. If anything, it’s getting darker. The economic “data dump” from Beijing on Friday showed that China’s recovery is sputtering – investment growth slowed, retail sales expanded at the slowest pace since late 2022, and new home prices fell at the fastest rate in nine years.Most alarming, the property sector bust is deepening. Granted, Chinese and Hong Kong shares jumped on Friday after Beijing unveiled a series of historic steps to stabilize the sector, but will the bounce last? Even though the central bank said it is facilitating 1 trillion yuan in extra funding and easing mortgage rules, and local governments will buy some apartments, deep-rooted fundamentals of huge over-supply and weak demand remain. Renewed concern over China’s growth raises the question of how Beijing will finance its fiscal support measures in the long term. China is sitting on more than $3 trillion of FX reserves. Is now the time for China to dip into that rainy day fund to prevent the property sector bust from bringing down the wider economy?It’s unlikely, and Beijing may well default to ramping up exports as the preferred path to recovery. But that would not be welcomed by the United States, which last week imposed extra tariffs on $18 billion of imports from China.These tariffs and the hardening battle lines between the West and China on trade are bound to feature prominently in next week’s meeting of G7 finance officials in Italy. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will attend, but it is unclear if Fed Chair Jerome Powell will travel, after he tested positive for COVID-19.That said, financial markets are enjoying a period of remarkable calm right now. Global FX volatility is the lowest in five weeks, U.S. Treasury market volatility is at a six-week low, and the VIX index on Friday fell below 12 for the first time this year.This low volatility environment is helping to lift U.S., European and other stock markets to all-time highs.The Asian economic calendar on Monday offers a decent serving of indicators for investors to get their teeth into, including: GDP from Thailand, current account and trade data from Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan, and unemployment from Hong Kong.China’s central bank is widely expected to keep its one- and five-year loan prime rates on hold again at 3.45% and 3.95%, respectively, after leaving its medium-term lending facility loans unchanged on Wednesday.Pressure is mounting for a cut soon, though. Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Monday:- Thailand GDP (Q1)- Taiwan exports (April)- Japan tertiary index (March) More