So here we are in August, and whilst it has been a relatively quiet start to the week for markets, we can now look back to see that in July, the S&P 500 had its best month since 2020, up 9.1% over the period.

It’s been a mixed bag for markets so far this week –the US dipped into the red over the first two days of the week following concerns that a profit warning from Walmart, the US retail giant, is an indicator of what’s to come.

“The only way is up” is a good theme to characterise the start of the week.
Firstly, many key markets opened with a bounce this week, with the FTSE 100 (at the time of writing) up 2.34% this week, and the S&P closing up 2.8% yesterday.

NASA released images from its James Webb Space Telescope this week, one of which is a crystal-clear picture which is said to contain the “deepest, most detailed infrared view of the universe to date”, allowing us to see billions of years into the past.

After being closed on Monday for Independence Day, US markets closed the trading day strongly yesterday, and key markets opened with a flourish today.

Following on from last week’s bounce, many key markets kept up their positive momentum into this week.

Markets have had a strong to start to the week. Sentiment was helped after Biden spoke early in the week to reiterate that a US recession isn’t inevitable, quoting the country’s low unemployment as a reason to be optimistic.

It was initially a difficult start to the week, driven in part by Friday’s higher than expected US CPI reading, which we discussed last week. However, we saw some green shoots from Chinese data this morning.

Following a long weekend of jubilation here in the UK, markets have broadly been flat.
On Monday, we saw a vote of confidence in the UK Prime Minister; ultimately Boris Johnson secured the confidence of his colleagues, but the margin was tighter than anticipated.

In place of our usual market update, the Investment Management team have provided a short Q&A with two of our Fund Managers to discuss raising inflation.