Monday, 3rd June: Queen Elizabeth opened her doors to Donald Trump on Monday, not literally of course, but their meeting was over-shadowed by a bitter twitter feud between the president and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. The trip, which was insisted by Theresa May back in 2017 was arranged with the hopes of boosting trade links and reaffirming security cooperation, but others including Sadiq Khan, Jeremy Corbyn and Yvette Cooper, were openly critical of the visit and suggested Britain shouldn’t resort to creating closer ties with such a president.
The controversial visit had a negative impact on the blue-chip index which started off the day 0.51% lower at the opening trade, and also had a negative impact on crude oil which caused the major oil stocks on the index to drop, and sent the market turning towards gold and silver for safety. However, by mid-day, oil prices made somewhat of a comeback and the index gradually rose into positive territory.
There were no major gainers or losers on the blue-chip index, however on the FTSE 250, Kier Group were trading almost 40.0% lower in the afternoon following a trading update which was accompanied by a profit warning of a £25 million hit to underlying operating profit, as well as a £15 million increase on net costs in comparison to what was previously forecast, for the full fiscal period which will end 30th June.
The FTSE 100 made an impressive U-turn today and closed 0.32% higher at 7,184.8, unlike the FTSE 250 which crashed and closed 0.49% lower at 18,877.2.