The infoshot to help kick-start your week
Autumn Budget delivered
Rachel Reeves delivered her long-awaited Autumn Budget on Wednesday. She kept to the Labour party’s manifesto pledge not to raise revenue via rises in income tax, VAT or NI. She opted to raise £26bn by making an array of smaller changes including freezing tax thresholds, cutting the cash ISA limit for under 65s to £12,000, capping pension salary sacrifice at £2,000, raising the Remote Gaming Duty and introducing a high value council tax surcharge on properties worth more than £2mn.
Bond markets reacted positively. On the day, UK 10-year gilt yields went through their largest Budget or major fiscal statement fall since 2006. The FTSE markets did dip when the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) report was leaked but quietly bounced back during Reeves’ speech in parliament.
Reeves spent the weekend doing the rounds on TV and radio defending her Budget against accusations that she misled the public by overstating the poor health of our public finances. Reeves has denied the accusation, saying on Sunday, “I clearly could not deliver a budget with just £4.2bn of headroom.”
If you want more information on how the Budget impacts financial planning, our friends at Wealthtime are hosting a CPD-accredited webinar with Tony Wickenden and Claire Trott at 9am on Thursday.
Nasdaq has its best day since May
US markets enjoyed a better week as the AI boom and bubble pendulum swung back to optimistic. The tech-dominated Nasdaq started the week with its best day since May, shooting up 2.7% and finished the week up 5.4%.
Part of this may have been driven by Tesla shares soaring 7% on Monday after Elon Musk talked up their chip making capabilities claiming they have “already designed and deployed several million AI chips” in their vehicles and data centres. He also said they’re close to upgrading their current A14 chip to the next A15 model.
Despite ongoing tensions between Japan and China, the AI optimism had a knock-on effect on the Nikkei 225 and CSI 300 with both finishing up 3.35% and 1.64% respectively.
Revolut valuation surpasses high street banks
Challenger bank, Revolut, secured a £57bn valuation in a secondary share sale. The world’s largest company, Nvidia, was among the investors purchasing an undisclosed number of shares through it’s venture capital arm, NVentures. The £57bn valuation gives Revolut a higher market value than Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest.
Coming Up:
- Fed Chair Speaks, Tuesday 2 December 2025 at 01:00
- Europe CPI, Tuesday 2 December 2025 at 10:00
- ADP Nonfarm Employment, Wednesday 3 December at 13:15
Notice:
For regulated financial advisers and investment professionals only, Copia does not provide financial advice, and the contents of this document should not be taken as such. The performance of each asset class is represented by certain Exchange Traded Funds available to UK investors and expressed in GBP terms selected by Copia Capital Management to represent that asset class, as reported at previous Thursday 4:30pm UK close. Reference to a particular asset class does not represent a recommendation to seek exposure to that asset class. This information is included for comparison purposes for the period stated but is not an indicator of potential maximum loss for other periods or in the future.
