The US Federal Reserve are meeting later today for their next open committee meeting, and it seems that they will be enacting a 25-bps interest hike, which will take the US base rate to 0.25-0.5% from 0- 0.25%.

This is extremely important for markets as the US has the largest economy and the US dollar is the favoured global currency.

Even with the continuing tensions in Ukraine, the Federal Reserve will be looking to follow the UK and other central banks to increase its interest rates over time as the US economy battles higher inflation and continues to move out of the COVID crisis.

This rate rise is the first, and it is expected further hikes will be implemented over the coming meetings to take interest rates back to more normal levels, after they were cut to help fight the recession caused by global lockdowns due to COVID-19.