Weekly Market Summary.

In the penultimate week of the UK election campaign trail, following a somewhat stagnant television debate on Sunday (which Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn did not attend), it was no surprise to see Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, target the NHS as a key battleground in this election early in the week.

It was another week of mixed trade messages. Global equity markets started the week on a positive note amid optimism that the first phase of a US/China trade deal would shortly be agreed after China said it would tighten intellectual property rules (this is what the US has been pushing for).

US/China trade talks continued to dominate global equity market sentiment. The week started positively after it was signalled that the US and China were edging towards an initial trade agreement (phase 1), following constructive discussions between China’s Vice-Premier Liu He, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Positive news flow from US-China trade talks resulted in another positive week for global equity markets.

This week, central banks and politicians delivered few surprises allowing global equity markets to take direction from economic data and corporate results.

Global equities ended the week higher thanks to better than expected corporate results which highlighted that companies are weathering the slowing economic growth and trade dispute.

It felt like this day would never come, but Brexit may finally be here! However, everything depends on the outcome of tomorrow’s (Saturday 19 October 2019) Parliamentary session when MPs vote on the deal.

Sentiment going into this week’s US/China trade talks was negative after the US placed eight Chinese technology companies on a US blacklist and China stopped NBA (basketball) broadcasts.

Global equity markets declined at the start of the week after US ISM manufacturing PMI came in at 47.8 in September.