Coutts' Higgins: Carney cannot face being called the 'unreliable boyfriend' anymore

Overweight UK equities

Coutts' chief investment officer Alan Higgins has said the Bank of England needs to start raising interest rates while "the sun is shining" on the UK economy because at some point rates will have to start coming down again.

Higgins said the UK economy had "picked up nicely" after a weak Q1, which witnessed a string of poor data such as the economy growing by just 0.1% in Q1, the slowest rate since Q4 2012. This led the Monetary Policy Committee to leave rates unchanged at 0.5% in May, when at one point markets were pricing in a 98% chance of hike, leaving analysts to label BoE governor Mark Carney as the "unreliable boyfriend". "Carney has to raise rates in August as he does not want to be known as the unreliable boyfriend anymore," Higgins said. Monique Wong, multi-asset investment manager at Coutts,...