Weekly Market Summary.

For us, the main story of the week was the US Central bank’s monetary policy meeting.

As you can see from the accompanying table, US equity markets welcomed Joe Biden as the new president with a strong week.

While Donald Trump’s impeachment grabbed the headlines this week, it had absolutely no impact on equity markets as Donald Trump’s Presidency naturally comes to an end next Wednesday (20 January 2021) with the inauguration of Joe Biden.

While it was a historically depressing week given the scenes of protesters storming Capitol Hill in Washington, coupled with the surging coronavirus cases (resulting in tighter lockdown restrictions) around the globe; at the same time it was a historically upbeat week for equity markets…

The champagne corks weren’t exactly popping as it was a quiet end to a horrible year – and one that we are pleased to see the back of.

Overall it has been a ‘nothing week’. We had high hopes on Brexit negotiations, US fiscal stimulus talks and monetary policy meetings at the major central banks, but all effectively turned out to be non-events.

Global Equity markets held up for most of the week, but with no breakthroughs on a new US fiscal stimulus package or post-Brexit trade relations, they closed the week broadly lower.

It’s beginning to look a lot like a Christmas broken record as this week’s equity market theme is a familiar one: a tug of war between the short-term coronavirus impact on one side and the long-term optimism, thanks to vaccine developments, on the other.

Disappointingly, the UK’s FTSE-100 performance lagged behind its peers due to the tougher than expected new regional coronavirus lockdowns coupled with the strength of the pound, which has risen by over 3% this month on speculation that a Brexit deal will be reached – and given around two-thirds of the FTSE-100’s total revenue is derived from abroad, a strong pound is negative for the FTSE-100 as it reduces returns for exporters and the value of overseas earnings.

The continuing tug of war between the upsetting coronavirus infections and hospitalisations on one end and coronavirus vaccine optimism on the other meant that most global equities markets ended the week flat.