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After the sluggish wages data yesterday, the pound was hit again this morning on news UK inflation remained flat in June, raising further doubts over an August rate hike from the Bank of England. But this was good news for the stock markets, with the commodity-heavy FTSE 100 extending its gains after a sizeable rally the day before and despite ongoi...

Risk remained on the table in the first half of European session. Safe haven gold and yen fell while stock indices pushed higher with the German DAX printing a new high for the week and reached its best level since early February.

The UK’s FTSE 100 index has had an amazing run of late, outperforming many of its peers. It has been supported above all by a weaker pound after a run of poor economic pointers sharply reduced the probability of a Bank of England rate increase in May.

The US-led strikes against Syria turned out to be a non-event as far the markets are concerned and fortunately there were no reports of casualties.

After Monday's bounce and a firmer open this morning, bearish speculators evidently stepped back in at relatively higher levels.

It is a bit calmer than chaos this morning following yesterday's big sell-off in global stock markets and sizeable rally in safe haven gold and yen. But what I have seen in the markets so far this morning has “dead-cat bounce” written all over it.

European politics will be dominating the headlines in the coming weeks and months. As a result, the market’s focus will turn to European markets as we could see heightened volatility and therefore more trading opportunities.

Something odd is happening this morning. Both the pound and the FTSE are higher. The two assets have had a strong negative correlation for several months. The relationship made sense: a stronger pound is not meant to be positive for UK stocks as it could hurt exports and thus profitability. So the theory goes. In practice, it is not as simple as tha...

Stock markets reaction to Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday was… well, muted. The New US President delivered a speech which was centred on the idea of protectionism but made no mention of the Mexican wall. I don’t understand why everyone was expecting to see fireworks in the markets on Friday. Shocking as it may sound, he was going to become the...

For obvious reasons, all the focus is on the OPEC meeting. As we pointed out the possibility yesterday, oil prices have bounced back very strongly today on renewed hopes that oil ministers will, after all, be able to hammer out a deal later on to limit crude production. Brent was up a good 8% at the time of this writing. No official announcement has...

European stock markets have started Friday’s session brightly, extending their advance from the late afternoon rebound on Thursday. The rally has probably taken many people by surprise, although this shouldn’t be the case given that the markets in both the UK and US are still very close to their all-time highs. There is a reason why the markets are ...

The UK inflation figures were stronger than anticipated, with headline CPI rising at a 0.6% rate rather than 0.5% that had been widely expected. The impact of Brexit was very clear as a significantly weaker pound caused the price of goods and raw materials purchased by manufacturers to soar.