Some big investors are betting that UK Chancellor John Healey will stick to fiscal discipline in his first budget, setting off a gilts rally.

At a local real estate agency on London’s southeastern edge, manager Steve Brown has added a new, and rather unlikely, topic to the usual chatter with clients about house prices and commute times: swap rates.

Traders are boosting bets on interest-rate hikes from the European Central Bank and the Bank of England as climbing energy prices threaten to keep inflation entrenched through the coming year.