Closing post
Time to wrap up, after a week in which recession fears gripped the markets tighter, UK industrial relations worsened as workers pushed for cost-of-living pay rises, and petrol got ever more expensive.
Here’s today’s main stories.
Have a lovely weekend... GW
Key event
Wall Street has begun the second half of the year as it ended the first -- with share prices dropping.
The benchmark S&P 500 index has shed 18 points, or 0.4%, in early trading to 3,769 points, adding to the 20% plunge since the start of January.
The Dow is down 0.6% while the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite is 0.3% lower.
There are examples of US stocks recovering from first-half tumbles in the second six months of the year, so the markets could turn things around by December.....
S&P 500 performance:
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) July 1, 2022
year: 1st half: 2nd half: full year:
1962: -23.5% +15.3% -11.8%
1970: -21% +26.7% +0.1%
2022: -20.6%
Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices
...but that would need inflation to ease off, so central bankers could stop tightening policy quite so aggressively.
