Weekly Market Summary.

This week has been much like a Sunday, following a ‘big’ Saturday night out… in that not that much has happened other than the hangover from the night before!

In a week that seemed primed to be dominated by central bank meetings and policy, in particular by the US Federal Reserve (Fed), it ended up being hijacked by none other than US President Donald Trump!

UK Media has been dominated by the change in government this week, however, the developments had little bearing on global equity market direction as investors were focused on the ECB’s monetary policy announcement and US economic data.

It would be wrong to conclude that it was a quiet week given global equity markets were little changed, as beneath the surface there were plenty of interesting stories bubbling away.

Global equity markets have been buoyed in recent weeks by the prospect of central banks loosening monetary policy.

As we entered the second half of the year, positive momentum in global equity markets continued as the side meeting at the G20 last weekend (29-30 June) between US and Chinese Presidents, Trump and Xi, concluded positively, giving markets a good start to the week.

The main event this week was the two-day G-20 summit in Japan starting today (Friday 28 June 2019) as Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping have agreed to meet each other on the side-lines tomorrow (Saturday 29 June 2019).

Global equities rose this week on the prospect of looser monetary policy and the hope that US/China trade talks will soon resume.

Global equity markets faced crosscurrents this week, as positive US-Mexico trade developments were overshadowed by uncertainty over US-China trade.

The last two weeks’ equity market moves show perfectly that markets rarely move in a straight line and it is best not to make knee-jerk decisions.