A week of hikes hinted, hikes delivered, and a quiet finish

Hold, hike, and a hint

The Bank of England left rates unchanged on Thursday. This is Money reported that Andrew Bailey used the occasion to hint at a rise in November, with inflation pressures building, and framed the decision as the Bank going it alone.

Alex Brummer, writing in the same title, put the question more sharply: if a rise in bank rate will be necessary this year, why delay? City A.M. devoted a separate explainer to the other half of the Bank's week, asking what on Earth it has done with its bond sale programme. The gilt run-off, once a technical footnote, now gets its own headline.

Tokyo went further. The Bank of Japan raised interest rates to a 31-year high, according to reports from both the Guardian and the BBC, explicitly to curb the impact of rising prices. It is the highest policy rate in Japan since the mid-1990s and the clearest sign yet that the long era of near-free money there has been unwound rather than paused.

The South China Morning Post published its own tally of four figures shaping markets, among them US Federal Reserve rates and China's share of global exports. In the American bond market the arithmetic was plainer still: by Friday the two-year Treasury yield had reached its highest level since 2024.

Wall Street's round trip

Thursday belonged to the machines. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq posted their biggest gains in six weeks, and the Wall Street Journal attributed the move to investors returning to AI stocks, snapping the market out of what it called inflation gloom.

Friday unwound much of the mood without quite reversing it. The Journal's live coverage opened with technology shares climbing even as Treasury yields rose; futures had been higher with oil extending its losses. By the afternoon the same publication was reporting stocks declining as yields rose. At the close the verdict was mixed, with inflation trepidation offsetting AI optimism, and the week was summed up as a volatile one ending quietly.

Two days, two headlines, and very little net distance travelled.

The primary market kept moving regardless. Nscale, the cloud computing start-up backed by Nvidia, filed for an initial public offering on Friday — another AI-adjacent business choosing to come to market while enthusiasm for the theme is intact. It joins a queue that has been building through the year, and it does so in a week when the two-year Treasury yield was setting multi-year highs, which is not the backdrop new listings usually prefer. The Journal also reported that buyers of the Los Angeles Lakers laid out plans to reach a $30 billion valuation in a pitch to investors, a document circulating on the same evening the equity market was finishing flat.

Listings, creditors and the cost of money

Revolut is weighing a dual listing in New York and London for its long-delayed IPO, according to Euronews. This is Money covered the same story with a longer memory, noting that the digital bank had previously mocked the UK stock market. A dual listing would let it have the argument both ways.

Elsewhere the news was about money owed rather than money raised. The BBC reported that there are insufficient funds to pay Brewdog's creditors following the takeover deal for the brewer. MPs urged ministers to break off talks with US hedge funds over Thames Water, the Guardian reported, pressing instead for the special administration regime.

Higher rates are working their way through the private markets too. The Wall Street Journal's bankruptcy briefing reported that they are deepening private equity's zombie-fund problem — vehicles that cannot sell their assets and cannot wind themselves up.

And on the High Street, the transmission is quicker than any model. Next told This is Money that fears of interest rate hikes are putting Britons off shopping, which closes the loop that opened in Threadneedle Street on Thursday: a hint about November, delivered in September, already showing up in the tills.