Thursday, 22^nd August: The FTSE 100 absolutely could not make its mind up this week. Monday it was up, Tuesday it was down, Wednesday it was back up, and Thursday it was down again. I’m sure there’s a way to incorporate Craig David Seven Days into that, but I’ll leave the quirky blogs to my colleague who is much wittier than I am. Nonetheless, once again one of the main contributors to this was Brexit and its effect on the pound.

Boris Johnson met with Emmanuel Macron today, who suggested that although there is not enough time to draft up an entirely new deal (not that it would be accepted anyway), he would still consider small tweaks to the withdrawal agreement if Johnson wishes to bring any to the table, as long as they weren’t too different to the existing terms. This resulted in a sharp jump of 0.93% and 1.03% of the pound against the dollar and euro respectively.

As the majority of the elite FTSE 100 constituents fell on Thursday, there was still one very distinct winner. NMC Health was up more than 20.0% in the afternoon following the release of their interim results which revealed that two other groups were competing to buy a 40% stake in NMC, worth up to £1.5 billion.

The FTSE 100 closed 1.05% lower at 7128.18, but the FTSE 250 managed to dodge the drama and closed 0.01% lower at 19205.3.