Investors sold nearly £1 billion of shares last month to avoid the hike in capital gains tax in the budget.

Sell orders soared by a third in the weeks running up to the Chancellor’s statement on 30 October, indicating a desire to take profits before the changes kicked in.

Rachel Reeves announced that the higher rate of capital gains tax paid on shares would increase to 24% from 20% and the lower rate to 18% from 10%.

Calastone, the global funds network, said that in the month before the Budget sell orders rose 36% to a record £17 billion and fell by 40% immediately after the Budget.

Markets were shaken by the package of measures although there has not been any bond market turmoil similar to what followed the 2022 “mini-budget” of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng.

The yield on UK benchmark 10-year bonds stood at 4.48% on Monday afternoon, up from 4.45% on Friday, suggesting that traders have sold UK government debt.

Las night the FTSE 100 closed slightly higher, up 7.09 points at 8,184.24.

US stocks slipped during a jittery session on Monday to kick off a week of potentially huge market-moving events, including the presidential election.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by 0.6% while the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite both fell by about 0.3%.

Stocks may get an uplift this week when both the US Federal Reserve and Bank of England are expected to cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point.

Oil prices jumped nearly 3% after OPEC+, a group of major oil producers, decided to delay a planned hike in output by at least a month and Iran escalated Mideast tensions by warning of a “crushing response” to Israel’s strikes.

Retail sales growth slows

UK retail sales growth slowed in October, according to the British Retail Consortium and KPMG, with consumers tightening purse strings amid rising energy bills and pre-budget uncertainty.

Sales rose 0.6% on-year in October, below the three-month average rise of 1.3% and the 12-month average growth of 1.0%. In October 2023, sales had risen 2.6% on-year.

Total sales in Scotland fell by 0.7% compared with October 2023, when they had grown 2.9%. This was below the 3-month average decrease of 0.6% and below the 12-month average growth of 0.1%. Adjusted for inflation, there was a year-on-year increase of 0.1%.

David Lonsdale, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, “Scottish retailers will need even more patience as they wait for retail sales to return to significant growth.

“Sales rose by a microscopic 0.1 percent in October in real terms, an identical result to September and continuing a trend of essentially static trading which runs back to June.”