Weekly Market Summary.

This week’s Fed monetary policy meeting was like an underwhelming party, in that it was disappointing, but hard to say exactly why – and as a result, after a promising start to the week, global equity markets reversed course and ended the week very slightly lower.

All-in-all it’s been a positive week for equity markets despite all the negative news headlines.

With the kids now back in school, it hasn’t exactly been the summer we all expected at the beginning of the year! However, while there have been lots of cancelled holidays and no relaxing on Mediterranean beaches, it hasn’t stopped the positive economic data readings.

In what has arguably been the quietest week this year in terms of economic data, the majority of markets closed the week in positive territory, largely looking through the plethora of noise despite pockets of volatility.

Having started the week optimistically, unfortunately sentiment became more cautious as the week progressed and as a result, most of the major equity markets ended the week lower.

Global equity markets ended the week higher thanks to economic data which shows that the global economy is continuing to recover.

As you can see from the accompanying chart, it is often best to ignore all of the noise you hear and read in the media, as the vast majority of global equity markets ended the week higher

It was a slow week in terms of economic data, but the data sets that were released were crucial indicators to the health and outlook of some of the major global economies.

As you can see in the accompanying table, global equity markets closed this week slightly lower. However, just taking the table at face value doesn’t tell the full story, similar to watching the news headlines on TV!

It was very much a week littered with news, data and central bank meetings. This flow of information saw markets have their fair share of volatility, yet the majority have ended the week in positive territory.