On Monday, US markets reached a record high and the FTSE 100 saw a real surge, after US and China agreed a trade truce, reported The Daily Telegraph. The same news sparked a rally in tech stocks – although this was not uniform for all tech company shares, reported CNN.
In what has been a strange and under reported battle between Switzerland and the EU, who remain at loggerheads as a trading ban on Swiss stocks came into force on Monday, reported The Express. The EU refused to accept the Swiss stock market’s rules as ‘equivalent’ to its own. CNN suggested this scenario was an indication of what the UK faces in a no-deal Brexit.
The Wall Street Journal reported that activity in the US services sector slowed in June, presenting a wider picture of the economy that could well be reverting to a slower pace of growth after a strong 2018.
Calls by Bank of England governor Mark Carney for the UK fund sector to be reformed post-Brexit have been given short shrift from the industry, according to The Financial Times.
The likeliness of a stock market listing for UK supermarket Asda, by its US parent Walmart, is quite a bit further down the road – in ‘two to three years’ Asda CEO Roger Burnley told Reuters on Wednesday.
Also mid-week, peer-to-peer lending marketplace Funding Circle surprised the City of London when it massively cut its growth forecast by half, reported The Evening Standard.
Investors at Sainsbury’s AGM this week described CEO Mike Coupe as ‘useless’ and said he should to be fired after its planned merger with Asda was blocked by regulators, reported Sky News.
Tesla’s record sales in the second quarter gave Wall Street a boost, but the sales alone will not quash concerns that the company can attract sustained demand, reported the Financial Times.
On US Independence Day, Britain’s mining stocks brought the FTSE 100 lower, while shares of IAG and Coca Cola HBC slid, according to Reuters.
The UK’s competition regulator, The Competition and Markets Authority, ordered Amazon and the food delivery company Deliveroo to pause any coming together in a deal, and instead, await an investigation into potential breaches of competition rules, reported The Guardian.
India’s stock market rally has lost its way with the NSE index lagging its Asian peers as domestic economic concerns take center stage and as last month’s national election euphoria wanes, reported Reuters.
Europe’s banking resolution processes need the necessary approaches and mechanism to ensure a troubled lender has sufficient liquidity, warned ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos and Bank of Spain Governor Pablo Hernandez de Cos on Friday, reported Reuters.
Early Friday, as investors awaited the key US nonfarm payrolls report, European stocks fell and US futures were steady, according to Bloomberg. On the same theme, CNBC reported that stocks in Asia were subdued Friday ahead of the release of the US jobs report, which may in turn provide an indication as to whether the Fed will cut interest rates at its July monetary policy meeting.
