How to target the latest Post entry via <a href=”” >

Hi there,

I’m pretty new to WP and am trying to figure out the following:

I’ve set by default homepage to be a static Page via the “Reading Settings”
How do I then target the latest post entry via a <a href ?
I’ve tried the <?php echo get_permalink(); ?> method but this just target the default page i.e. the static Page.
I can target a specific post using the ID within the string such as:
<?php echo get_permalink(1); ?> but this doesn’t really solve the problem as I want the link to target the latest entry.

Maybe I’m missing something quite obvious here but any direction would be much appreciated

Thanks in advance
nickmerr