Flash Stats - Q1 2024

In our regular market round-up, we take a look at what's happened in Q1 2024.

The first quarter saw a meaningful scaling back of market expectations for the number of interest-rate cuts in 2024 in light of stronger-than-expected US growth, improving growth momentum and signs of a slowing downtrend in inflation. Nonetheless, economic optimism and AI enthusiasm led to strong global equity returns and a fall in credit spreads.

Some of the headlines in the first quarter of 2024 include:

• Data released in the first quarter revealed that the US economy grew quicker than previously envisaged. It grew at an annualised quarterly pace of 3.4% in the final quarter of 2023, amid ongoing resilience in consumer spending. Meanwhile, European data showed the UK entered a technical recession, as GDP fell 0.3% in Q4 following a 0.1% contraction in Q3. The eurozone economy flirted with one, after stagnating in Q4.

• Backward-looking GDP data and coincident survey data that point to an economy with much stronger momentum than previously anticipated, saw consensus forecasts for year-on-year US GDP growth in 2024 jump from 1.4% in January to 2.2% in March. At the same time, global growth forecasts for 2024 have been revised up to 2.4%. While European and UK forecasts are much weaker, most economists expect a modest recovery for the majority of economies in the region this year. Much better-than-expected survey data suggests the UK recession is already over and points to decent growth in Q1. 

• US headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose unexpectedly to 3.2% year-on-year in February, fuelling fears that the downtrend in inflation is slowing. Equivalent UK and eurozone measures, however, eased to 3.4% and 2.6%, respectively. Equivalent core measures, which exclude volatile energy and food prices, came in at 3.8%, 4.5%, and 3.1% in the US, UK and eurozone, respectively.

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