Weekly Market Summary.

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.

It has been an emotional roller coaster ride this week: on the one hand front page news headlines on new infections, hospitalisations and deaths continued to worsen; and on the other hand we had positive findings from Pfizer’s (a US pharmaceutical company) coronavirus vaccine which set global equity markets alight this week.

The big winner this week has been global equity markets.

In a week that has been littered with pockets of volatility, the markets closed the weekly session lower.

As you can see from the accompanying table, most of the major global equities ended the week slightly lower.

As you can see from the accompanying table, overall it has been a mixed week: while US equity markets rose slightly, UK and European equity markets ended the week lower.

The cacophony of noise from the resurgence in coronavirus cases and the US election may be deafening, but it hasn’t stopped global equity markets rising strongly over the week.

Donald Trump dominated equity market sentiment this week.