Market Summary Week Ending 16/07/2023

Global markets shrugged off recent weeks of poor performance with positive results across the major indices.

In the US, all three major indices broke recent slides with positive weeks as a result of a strong start to the earnings season from the banking sector, with positive results from both JP Morgan and Wells Fargo.

Furthermore, CPI data released on Wednesday showed that US inflation slowed further to 3% for the 12 months to June 2023 in a positive step in the continued fight against rising prices.

Despite this, analysts are still expecting that the Federal Reserve will continue to raise rates further as the Core CPI Index (measuring price changes of goods and services excluding food and energy, and the Federal Reserves preferred measure) was 4.8% for the same time period – still a way above the longer-term target of 2%.

As a result, on a weekly basis, the Dow notched its best performance since March, up 2.3%. The S&P 500 added 2.4%, and the Nasdaq gained 3.3%.

In the UK, it was a quiet week with both FTSE indices benefitting from the inflation news in the United States, with further eyes on the inflation data release in the UK this coming Wednesday (19 July), with analysts’ expectation that the CPI rate will have fallen for the 12-month period up to June 2023.

Over the trading week, both the FTSE 100 & 250 finished up with gains of 2.28% and 3.02% respectively.

 

Please note for this weekly summary, we focus on the major indices within the financial markets such as the FTSE 100 (UK) and the Dow Jones and NASDAQ (US) to provide a factual account of what has happened within a certain index. Performance figures quoted are factual from the previous week’s trading and this summary is for commentary purposes only.

The performance of these indices is not a representation of an individual fund or portfolio. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. The value of your investment can go down as well as up. You could get back less than you originally invested.