This week, hawkish comments from the Bank of Japan’s (BoJ) policymakers have markets wondering whether their quantitative tightening plan being unveiled in July will be bigger than originally thought.

Earlier this morning, the latest UK CPI report revealed inflation has eased to the Bank of England’s 2% target on year in May, down from 2.3% in April – something only last seen back in July 2021.

Well, we’ve already seen the ECB cut rates last week by twenty five basis points, and this week the Bank of England were given some important data to digest ahead of their next interest rate decision meeting on the 20th of June.

This week markets have digested plenty of election news.

This week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) upped China’s growth forecast for this year to 5% from a previous estimate of 4.6%.

Reports this morning showed that the latest UK headline inflation rate saw prices rising by 2.3% on year in April, in comparison to March’s 3.2% climb.

On Tuesday this week, data on the UK labour market indicated a potential slight tempering of the jobs market.

On Monday, while UK markets remained closed in observance of the Early May bank holiday, European and US markets operated as usual.

Following on from promising GDP growth in Q1 that exceeded forecasts, reports on Tuesday revealed that China’s manufacturing sector has expanded for the second month in a row

Markets rallied this week as a busy week of earnings reports got underway and investors look to a full week of key economic data.