US interest rates went up by another 0.75% as the Federal Reserve continues its fight against inflation.
Tonight’s rise to 4% for the top end of the Fed Funds rate range followed three hikes of a similar size over the summer, comes with Wall Street increasingly hopeful that the pace of monetary tightening will slow from December.
In today’s corporate updates, retailer Next said underlying sales growth of 0.4% for the quarter to Saturday was slightly better than it had expected. It continues to forecast annual profits of £840 million, a rise of 2.1% on a year earlier.