Tuesday, 30 January: After a rare day of losses on Wall Street yesterday, led by technology stocks and a spike in US bonds, the tone was set for a negative day today. It did not disappoint, as European opening bells rang Asian markets had already received their fair share of punishment, the Nikkei closing 1.43% lower to end at its lowest level since the first day of trade this year. The FTSE told a similar story, after opening c.0.4% lower the main index continued to slide until the close, where it slumped to a 5-week low, -1.09% to just below 7,600. French and German bourses were amongst numerous others posting chunky losses, with the aforementioned closing 0.76% and 0.91% lower. As we write, US markets haven’t managed to reverse the trend, and the Dow looks poised to post its first triple digit back to back losses in almost exactly a year to the day. After earlier weakness, the pound has picked up some momentum and currently sits 0.3% higher against the dollar and +0.25% against our euro neighbours. There were few winners on the day, as banks and miners helped the FTSE lower. Standard Chartered was the biggest loser of the day, falling 2.93%.

In other business news, BuzzFeed News has obtained papers on the government’s analysis of the impact of Brexit. The papers more elusive than a Newcastle FC signing, that David Davis claimed existed but then it turned out they didn’t and nobody was working on them. But there’s a twist…. It appears he may have been telling the truth. So why not just release the findings? Well it might be because the findings were that bad it was better to act like they’d just been guilty of negligence. Unfortunately this isn’t a secondary school science class where you can go home and doctor the results and pretend everything went to plan. These findings have been leaked and it basically outlines how in every scenario of Brexit we will be worse off, which is great. The report has stated that almost every sector will be negatively impacted and every region would be hit. Also great. So, it’s no wonder they did this report and thought actually, let’s pretend this never happened. They have claimed it needs further work *tipex at the ready*.