Market Updates.

It has been a very busy 24 hours for economic data, the biggest of which was the US non-farm payroll data for June.

The tug of war between an economic recovery versus a rise in coronavirus cases and geopolitical tensions continues to yo-yo equity markets.

June closed with plenty of razzle-dazzle thanks to the biggest increase in US consumer confidence since November 2011.

The tug of war between an economic recovery versus a rise in coronavirus cases has continued overnight. US equity markets yesterday recouped the vast majority of last week’s losses, after the Dow Jones rallied nearly 600 points, or 2.32%

Global equity markets reversed yesterday morning’s losses to close in positive territory – and this positive sentiment has continued into today, with the FTSE-100 currently up around 80 points, or 1.30%.

As global equity markets are currently trading on every news headline, the mood has quickly turned from positive to negative. As a result, global equity markets fell heavily yesterday – and this has unfortunately followed through into this morning.

The path for global equities is never smooth or easy – and as we have previously said, because equity markets hate uncertainty (and the coronavirus outbreak is a big uncertainty), they are currently trading on every news headline.

Although the FTSE-100 ended yesterday (Monday 22 June 2020) lower due to concerns that the coronavirus infection rates are still rising (especially in the US), interestingly US markets weren’t particularly concerned and ended the day higher as economic data continues to point to a ‘V-shaped’ economic recovery.

While yesterday afternoon’s US jobless data showed an improvement on the prior week, it was nevertheless disappointing – although as we highlighted last Friday, there’s a lot of confusion and distortions in the data right now.

Data from the US yesterday (Wednesday 17 June 2020) showed that Americans were looking at renovating or moving to a bigger, better home as mortgage applications rose to their highest level since 2009.