“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.
It was initially a difficult start to the week, driven in part by Friday’s higher than expected US CPI reading, which we discussed last week. However, we saw some green shoots from Chinese data this morning.
Following a long weekend of jubilation here in the UK, markets have broadly been flat.
On Monday, we saw a vote of confidence in the UK Prime Minister; ultimately Boris Johnson secured the confidence of his colleagues, but the margin was tighter than anticipated.
In place of our usual market update, the Investment Management team have provided a short Q&A with two of our Fund Managers to discuss raising inflation.
We’ve had some detail from China this week on plans in place to loosen the lockdowns in Shanghai: shops will begin to open this week, further restrictions will ease towards the end of the week, public transport will start back up and further normality will return from 1st June.
The big news to start the week was the result of the French Presidential run-off election on Sunday. Sitting President Emanuel Macron held off his far-right opposition leader, Marine Le Pen
