Need to Know Investment Podcast · Coutts

Need to Know - 18 December, Rate expectations

·36 min·2 clips

1,618,840,606 ballots were cast across 71 elections in democracies this year.

Need to Know opens with a quick-fire numbers prompt before moving into its main market discussion. Sarah Muir and David Brunford use the first stretch to warm up the audience, then settle into a recap of 2024. The tone stays measured, not flashy. The hosts treat the year as one that rewarded flexibility more than certainty. They argue that investors needed ideas that could still work if events moved away from the cleanest forecast. The conversation quickly turns to rate expectations. Central banks become the main focus. The episode discusses a possible Fed cut path and contrasts it with the European Central Bank. Europe is framed as more exposed to energy shocks because it is not energy independent. That dependence helps explain why disinflation there is tied so closely to global energy costs and weather. The hosts note that the ECB started cutting in June, then again in September and October. They keep coming back to timing as much as direction. Inflation is still moving down. Core inflation is sticky, but trending lower. The labor market is treated as the reason central banks have had room to maneuver. The episode also asks how much credit central banks deserve for the soft landing narrative. Stabilizing energy prices and improved supply chains get a lot of weight. That point is repeated cautiously, with the suggestion that policy may have been a bit late. The hosts do not overstate the case. They acknowledge that fresh macro prints are still coming in over the next couple of weeks, which leaves room for the data to complicate things. The episode also revisits market excitement around last year’s Fed pivot. It sets that optimism against the slower reality that followed. Near the end, the conversation broadens into a reminder not to force every investment idea into a short time box. Geopolitics and politics are treated as longer-horizon forces that play out over years or decades. The episode then tees up a special follow-up with Amelie Serrado from Christie’s. That next conversation will cover bananas, the state of the art market in 2024, and what may be shaping 2025.

As heard by us

A calm year-end macro recap that treats rate expectations as a question of timing, not certainty.

Need to Know uses its 2024 recap to trace the distance between market expectations and what the data actually did, with rate expectations as the thread running through it.

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Why you'd press play

You want a clear recap of why rate cuts were delayed and what 2024 said about inflation.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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