Market Summary Week Ending 18/06/2023

Last week we saw the US Federal Reserve pause its interest rate hiking cycle that has been prevalent over the past 18 months. Their European counterparts hiked rates once more, whilst the People’s Bank of China cut rates and signalled further policy easing to come.

We are seeing unsynchronized central bank policy with inflation and growth data extremely mixed in many countries. The Eurozone economy has had a technical recession with consecutive quarters or negative growth. That said, employment is still expanding robustly, this mixed data set causes some tough calls for the European Central Bank as they try to achieve the long-term inflation goal of 2%.

The rate news has prompted a largely positive response from markets with the US S&P 500 up 2.58%, the Nasdaq 100 up 3.82% and the FTSE 100 up 1.06%.

 

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.