Wednesday, 27^th December: The holidays aren’t over just yet, and to recap what has been happening since we last spoke, Kim Jong-un could potentially be preparing for civilised talks after a number of sanctions have been imposed on North Korea. Friday kicked off the first handout of sanctions, which the United Nations imposed with the aim of limiting North Koreas ability to get their hands on refined petroleum products, crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad. The United States added to this just yesterday, by announcing further sanctions on two North Korean figures who rank highly with regards to the operations behind the missile programme.

Regardless of North Korea accusing the United Nations and United States’ actions to be an act of war, others, such as South Korea, seem to be quite optimistic about Kim Jong-un being prepared to start negotiation talks with President Trump in the new year, whether that’s a good idea or not and if Trump is the right person to talk to is a completely different story, is it too late to bring Obama back for a day?

Meanwhile, across the rest of the globe, commodities such as oil and copper are helping lift indexes and offset any damage inflicted onto the tech sector after disappointing iPhone X demand results. Crude was seen edging up to highs of $65.25/bbl which was last reached in June 2015, and Copper has surpassed a three year high after reaching $3.2560 to a pound. Economies across the globe seem confident for 2018 and believe that it will be a good year for growth, which Britain in particular are in desperate need of after a modest year of growth compared to other economies. Gold was moving slightly slower but still managed to make a small gain on 0.20% at £961.01 per ounce close to 17:00 (GMT).

By mid-day the FTSE 350 Mining sector was up over 2.0% thanks to the commodity gains, led by the likes of Fresnillo, KAZ Minerals, Polymetal International and the others. The FTSE 350 Food & Drug Retailers sector was also reasonably strong, not due to any particular outperformance from the typical food retailers such as Tesco or Morrisons, but rather due to gains made by Ocado Group, which was trading around 2.35% higher and leading the sectors’ gains.

By the end of the day, the FTSE 100 was up by 0.37% at 7620 after opening marginally higher by 0.07%.