Newsroom

Chancellor John Healey promised us a boring budget. On that, he delivered, with markets seemingly stable in the aftermath. However, it was a more nuanced and complex picture beneath the surface.

When traditional assets increasingly share the same global drivers, diversification may depend on finding genuinely different sources of return.

As a Bank with medical research among its philanthropy priorities, UBP placed health at the heart of its collective priorities this October and brought colleagues together across the Group to raise funds for the fight against breast cancer.

Global equities slipped for a second week as investors questioned whether debt-funded artificial intelligence (AI) spending can earn adequate returns. US Treasury yields fell back below 5%, while French government bond spreads reached their widest levels since the eurozone crisis. Hyperscaler earnings and a string of major policy meetings make this a decisive week, though most central banks are expected to leave their interest rates unchanged.

Oil prices are usually quoted as the future price of crude oil, with Brent and WTI being the main benchmarks. However, the economy relies on refined products such as diesel, petrol and jet fuel rather than on crude oil itself, and the cost of turning the one into the other is the refining margin, or ‘crack spread’. Adding this spread to Brent gives a proxy for what the end consumer actually pays, and on that basis the average price is currently around USD 140–180 per barrel.