Nobody believes the strategy will work

We do like the new government strategy for household energy management, we just don't think it's going to make much difference. But who cares about us, what does everyone else think?

Here's one way to find out. Today's chart shows the Centrica (i.e. British Gas) stock price since Ed Milliband launched the Warm Homes strategy on 2 March. According to the Minister, we are going to cut household energy demand - about 1/3 of Centrica Group profits - by 29% in 10 years. What did the market make of that? Hmmm. Centrica stock is up 4%.

(OK, so I admit, this one is just for fun. We could have looked at SSE, whose stock price has gone the other way in the same period. But the point is that the new strategy doesn't seem to have made a jot of difference to utility stocks. I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be the case, if analysts really believed that household energy demand was going to be down 30% within 10 years. Or if they expected the government to introduce a policy with a more dramatic impact, such as reverse pricing.)