Thursday, 4^th July: Following the UK government’s implementation of capping fixed-odds betting terminals at £2.00, William Hill have stepped forward to admit that the new regulation has resulted in a significant drop in gambling-machine revenue. Today, the group revealed that the regulation had caused even more damage as they announced the closure of approximately a third of their betting ships in the UK, which equated to 700 shops and a loss of around 4,500 jobs. However, the market didn’t respond too badly to the news as the change f focus to online betting and the US looks optimistic. As a result, they were trading marginally higher but still below 1.0% for the majority of the day.

US markets paused on Thursday for the July 4^th holiday which consequently caused the FTSE 100 to fall flat towards the end of the day and sterling to fall c.0.03% to $1.2579 against the dollar. However, the drop in Brent crude of 0.7% to $63.36 caused airlines IAG and easyJet to rise slightly by around 1.4%.

Although the blue-chip index made impressive progress throughout the week so far, on Thursday it failed to carry on with the same momentum as it closed 0.08% lower at 7603.58.