FTSE 100 heads south

On Friday, British blue-chip equities went down, getting back to negative territory after American leader Donald Trump told that he was geared up towards slapping duties on some $500 billion in China’s imports, potentially boosting his administration’s trade clash with the officials, who run the world’s number two economy.

The FTSE 100 index UKX edged down by 0.1% being worth 7,678.79. By the way, on Thursday, the index managed to ascend by 0.1%.

The currency pair GBP/USD hit $1.3105, reviving from an intraday minimum of $1.2995. On Thursday, the British pound dived below $1.30 getting to its lowest value versus the evergreen buck since early September.

The currency pair GBP/EUR gained 0.19% hitting €1.1201 versus Thursday’s outcome of €1.1178.

On Friday, Donald Trump dared to have China accused of manipulating its Yuan. The matter is that the weaker Chinese currency makes Chian’s products more competitive.

The European Union, China as well as other nations have been manipulating their currencies and also interest rates lower. Meanwhile, the Fed has been increasing its rates, thus backing the evergreen buck over and over again.

The FTSE 100 had leapt, underpinned by weakness in the UK currency versus the evergreen buck, although the greenback started losing more ground following Trump’s latest threat of more duties.

A lower value of the British currency can assist in raising the FTSE 100 due to the fact that a great number of multinational companies listed on the index make most of their sales in other assets.

The British currency had been forced to tumble to 10-month minimum following gloomy retail sales data on Thursday affected expectations that the Bank of England is going to have the benchmark interest rate raised from 0.5% at its gathering on August 2.

The equities of Glencore PLC GLEN slumped by 1.6%.

gbp stock market trade wars