April has been an action-packed month in the markets

One way or another, April has come with a good few watershed moments, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

You might not have found this month particularly interesting so far(unless you have more of a grasp of the details of the customs union than most people). But one way or another, April has come with a good few watershed moments.

The first came from the bond market: this week the US ten-year Treasury yield hit 3% for the first time since 2014. That's partly about the reversal of quantitative easing (QE). The Federal Reserve, now headed by Jerome Powell, is now selling bonds into the market, the immediate effect of which is to push down prices and raise yields. But it is also about inflation the oil price has risen sharply in the past couple of weeks, and in the US, inflation expectations are at a four-year high.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.