Smaller debt.
Same yield.
UK public debt sits at 93.8% of GDP, well under the US's 122.6%. The gilt market still charges nearly the same rate to hold it. That gap has a name: 2022.
4.99%
Within 3bp of what the US pays, on a debt pile a third smaller relative to GDP.
93.8%
ONS monthly figure, not an IMF annual estimate. Below the US, below the average G7 reading.
+48%
The same energy shock every geography in this pulse is pricing, North Sea output included.
+16.6%
Nothing in UK equities is pricing a gilt-market problem right now.
A smaller debt load, a bigger scar.
Debt-to-GDP alone would put UK borrowing costs below the US, not level with them. It isn't. The gap between the two is the part debt-to-GDP can't explain: a market that watched a UK government lose control of the gilt market once and now prices that risk into every auction, regardless of how the underlying arithmetic actually reads.
The number worth watching isn't the debt stock, it's the gap between debt -to-GDP and the yield. The US carries more debt and pays about the same rate; the UK carries less and pays it anyway. That spread is the market's live read on fiscal credibility, and it doesn't close just because the numbers improve.
Debt-to-GDP is ONS series HF6X, monthly, not the annual IMF-vintage
figure used elsewhere in this layer. Total official reserves from ONS
AIPD. Gilt yield from FRED IRLTLT01GBM156N. Brent and
FTSE 100 via yfinance.
What this mechanism has favored historically.
Hard assets, currency diversification
Physical gold. Assets priced away from sterling, which carries the same fiscal-credibility question the gilt market does.
Earnings insulated from the gilt market
Dollar and euro earners on the FTSE, largely funded outside the domestic gilt curve. Domestic non-discretionary consumption, the segment least exposed to a rates-driven slowdown at home.
Categories, not recommendations. Fit depends on your own risk tolerance and exposure.