Broad money expanded in October. A 0.3 percent monthly rise followed September's unrevised 1.1 percent decline but was only large enough to nudge annual growth a tick higher to minus 3.8 percent. This was its fifth sub-zero print in the last six months. M4 lending also expanded a monthly 0.3 percent, reducing its yearly contraction from 3.1 percent to 2.1 percent, its ninth successive negative post.

Excluding intermediate other financial institutions, M4 was up 0.5 percent versus September, its first increase since April but leaving a still sizeable yearly drop of 3.1 percent. Similarly adjusted lending dipped a monthly 0.1 percent and now stands 1.6 percent below its level a year ago.

Meanwhile, in the housing market news was mixed with mortgage approvals climbing from 43,765 to (a still historically soft) 47,383 but mortgage lending contracting a further £0.05 billion. At the same time, total consumer credit rose £1.289 billion, down slightly from September's £1.370 billion gain and a 5-month low.

In sum, the financial data would seem to be more consistent with modestly weak economic activity rather than a sizeable decline. Today's data should slightly increase the likelihood of no change in Bank Rate in December.

M4 is the Bank of England's main broad measure of money supply. There is no target for M4 and in practice the central bank tends to follow an adjusted measure that excludes intermediate other financial corporations in order to get a handle on current underlying trends. The M4 private sector lending counterpart is the most closely watched aspect of the report.

M4 is similar to the M3 measure used in some other countries. M4 includes everything in M2 (also called the retail component of M4) plus other deposits with an original maturity of up to five years; other claims on financial institutions such as repos and bank acceptances; debt instruments issued by financial institutions including commercial paper and bonds with a maturity of up to five years. Understanding the role of money in the economy has always been an important issue for policymakers. And the pickup in broad money growth and decline in credit spreads over the past three years together with more recent financial market turbulence has made it a particularly pertinent issue. Monetary data can potentially provide important corroborative or incremental information about the outlook for inflation. Quantitative easing is essentially a policy aimed at boosting money supply.