Best Gold Stocks to Buy Now: AABB, GOLD, GDX 
Today's domestic focus will be provided by the announcement at noon of the UK MPC's monetary policy decision. With the MPC universally expected to leave rates unchanged, the simultaneous publication of the meeting minutes and the vote split will provide a timely sense of how the perceived balance of risks is shifting in the eyes of the MPC.
The August minutes revealed that only one member - Ian McCafferty - plumped for an immediate 25bp tightening of policy. There has been little news since to highlight an increasing risk of underlying domestic cost pressures, and if anything, the tone of recent UK activity data has softened a little.
Conversely, softness of the external environment, including anxieties around China, softer commodity prices and lower Eurozone growth prospects are likely to weigh heavily on the MPC's deliberations. They are unlikely to shift the balance sufficiently for McCafferty to switch back his vote, and as such an 8-1 vote are seemed to split for unchanged rates as the most likely outcome. However, Andy Haldane's stance, highly attuned to downside inflation risks, also seems likely to require more space in the MPC minutes.
"With the same international anxieties providing the backdrop for the Fed's much-awaited policy decision next week, today's second-tier US data flow seems likely to only reinforce recent trends. Weekly jobless claims data are expected to confirm the health of the US labour market, while import price data are likely to point to further inflation weakness even outside of the impact of lower oil prices - providing little comfort for the Fed's 'reasonable confidence' criterion on the inflation outlook", says Lloyds Bank.
