Liz Truss was announced as the new leader of the Conservative party on Monday and the UK’s new prime minister after meeting the Queen at Balmoral yesterday, where she was asked to form a government after the resignation of Boris Johnson.

Global equity markets declined at the start of the week with the market placing bets on whether there has been a Federal Reserve pivot

The tension between Taiwan and China is growing, as this week China extends military drills around Taiwan, a move that Taiwan’s foreign minister (Joseph Wu) said is a game-plan for invasion.

So here we are in August, and whilst it has been a relatively quiet start to the week for markets, we can now look back to see that in July, the S&P 500 had its best month since 2020, up 9.1% over the period.

It’s been a mixed bag for markets so far this week –the US dipped into the red over the first two days of the week following concerns that a profit warning from Walmart, the US retail giant, is an indicator of what’s to come.

“The only way is up” is a good theme to characterise the start of the week.
Firstly, many key markets opened with a bounce this week, with the FTSE 100 (at the time of writing) up 2.34% this week, and the S&P closing up 2.8% yesterday.

NASA released images from its James Webb Space Telescope this week, one of which is a crystal-clear picture which is said to contain the “deepest, most detailed infrared view of the universe to date”, allowing us to see billions of years into the past.

After being closed on Monday for Independence Day, US markets closed the trading day strongly yesterday, and key markets opened with a flourish today.

Following on from last week’s bounce, many key markets kept up their positive momentum into this week.

Markets have had a strong to start to the week. Sentiment was helped after Biden spoke early in the week to reiterate that a US recession isn’t inevitable, quoting the country’s low unemployment as a reason to be optimistic.