On March 18, George Osborne delivered his sixth Budget and resisted the temptation to shower the electorate with bribes, instead continuing to promote this government as the one best qualified to steer us through what are still difficult waters.

There were modest increases to the growth forecasts and reductions to debt and future borrowing.

There were also measures targeted at businesses, including a tax on diverted profits, the so-called “Google Tax” aimed at multinational firms moving profits offshore; an annual bank levy to rise from 0.156% to 0.21% and a number of measures to support the oil and gas industry, costing a total of £1.3bn.

The Chancellor also announced freedom for the approximately 5m pensioners who already hold annuities to sell them on the secondary market from April, 2016. The Treasury expects to raise over £500m a year from these sales in the next few years, so it must believe that many will take advantage of this new right.

This demonstrates the Chancellor’s efforts to give more freedom to savers but, of course, it will also add to fears that the sheer pace of change in this part of the pension market will cause problems for pensioners and many financial institutions. This will be an ongoing debate in the months and years ahead.

Equity investors reacted positively to the Budget with the FTSE All-Share rising 1.43% on the day, but the pound continued its recent fall against the dollar and to a lesser extent the euro.

Some of the FTSE moves on the day can be traced to the measures to support the oil producers, but overall the Budget takeaways for investors were not hugely significant. I’m sure it was no more than coincidence that the FTSE100, fresh from a new all-time high, closed above 7,000 two days later.

Investors are understandably focused on next month’s general election which is probably the most uncertain in living memory. However, it remains our opinion that neither bond nor equity markets will be greatly affected by domestic politics – with global trends more influential.

Notwithstanding the UK election, we believe there are (at least) two more events that, although well telegraphed, have the potential to cause an upset.

First is the endless saga involving Greece’s access to finance and its long-term debt situation.

Markets remain relaxed about the outcome, with no signs of contagion spreading into other peripheral countries, at least as measured by bond spreads.

Our central view is that the system could withstand a “Grexit” (a Greece exit from the eurozone), but accept that such an event is unlikely to pass by without some increase in volatility.

The other big thing that everyone knows is going to happen some time soon is the first US interest rate rise in the next cycle.

Financial markets are populated with many people who have never experienced a “Fed Funds rise”. The most recent was on July 29, 2006, up 25 basis points to 5.25%, the last of 17 consecutive quarter point hikes dating back to mid-2004 (the last rise in the UK was on the July 5, 2007).

Average performance of equity markets over the first rate rise in cycles going back to the 1970s suggest that there is little to fear ahead of the event with a more mixed aftermath. Yet we can’t help feeling that such comparisons risk being misleading this time as we have certainly never had such a well-trailed shift in rates. In the past, rate rises have often come out of thin air as central banks moved to rein in inflationary pressures.

But we are also in a situation where zero interest rate policy has buoyed the valuations of riskier assets and it’s impossible to predict how this will unwind, especially with both the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan pursuing aggressively loose monetary policies.

Our Global Investment Strategy Group, which decides how much risk we want in client portfolios, met recently with these thoughts to the fore, but didn’t see enough evidence to de-risk portfolios yet.

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