Wednesday, 16th October: Fresh data on hump-day revealed that UK inflation remained still in September at 1.7%, below expectations of growth to 1.8% and identical to August, which is also the lowest since December 2016. One of the culprits stalling inflation was cheaper fuel, which dropped at the fastest rate since August 2016, but the decline in the price of second-hand cars was also a contributing factor. The latter had a particularly negative effect on Auto Trader on the FTSE 100 as it spent the entirety of the day at the bottom-end of the index and down almost 3.0% at the end of the day.
On Tuesday, the pound rose on optimistic Brexit news and the growing likelihood of a deal being made this week. On Wednesday, the exact opposite happened, and it slipped again on the governments now pessimistic views on a Brexit deal being agreed this week. However, it spiked again the in afternoon to $1.2839, its best since June after news surfaced that one of the Brexit obstacles had been removed. GBP/USD has had a roller coaster day to say the least.
Across the pond, Wall Street was dealing with its own struggles surround the US-China trade deal. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 both opened 0.2% lower in the morning, whilst the Nasdaq dropped slightly more by 0.34%.
As sterling managed to hold onto its comeback against the dollar by the end of the day, the FTSE 100 closed 0.61% lower at 7167.95, reversing all the gains made last week.
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