Thursday, 12 January: The president-elect held his first press conference yesterday before his inauguration ceremony on January 20th, but markets were left disappointed as Trump proved to be tight-lipped on prospective policy. However, no one could be in any doubt of Trump’s contempt for Obamacare(to be repealed & replaced “almost simultaneously”) and costly pharmaceuticals. Such was the case that it led to many large indices shedding points into the close yesterday(FTSE 100 included) on the bearish outlook for pharmaceutical stocks, a trend that continued today. However, this was not enough to deny the FTSE 100 a historic 12 session winning streak as the primary index broke 7,300 for the first time in history. Trump’s preference for protectionism was steadfast as he re-emphasised his desire for the on-shoring of jobs as the Mexican peso struggled on more talk of the ‘wall’. Overall, little more was espoused at the podium that we couldn’t already glean from Trump’s infamous 40 character updates. Consequently, investors cut bullish positions on the dollar, and a degree of flight to safe haven assets was seen as bonds rallied, and gold jumped $23 to $1201/oz.

On this side of the Atlantic, we saw further trading updates from retailers reporting varying degrees of success over the festive period. Retailers and miners helped to buoy stocks, as pharmaceutical stocks suffered a bit of a hangover from Trump’s comments yesterday.

At the close, European indices were mixed as the FTSE 100 closed +0.03%( for a record 13-session win streak), the CAC 40 -0.42% and the DAX 30 -1.02%.