This week began with further escalations in US-China trade tensions. At the start of the week, President Trump announced tariffs on a further $200billion worth of Chinese imports to be implemented from next Monday. The measures are set to take effect at a rate of 10%, before ramping up to 25% at the beginning of 2019.

Despite Brexit-related doom and gloom and a toxic political backdrop, the British economy is still booming based on the data released this week.

Emerging market assets have remained an area of focus in recent weeks, with prices declining in response to a stronger US Dollar and country specific issues in Turkey and Argentina, with the latter requesting financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund.

In case you hadn’t noticed we have a mere seven months until the scheduled date for the UK to formally leave the European Union (EU) on 29 March 2019, and four months until the end of the year, by which point we should be starting to see clearly if the UK is going to face a soft or hard Brexit. Over this period, the UK Government will either have to strike a deal with the EU on the three key divorce issues (how much the UK owes the EU, what happens to the Northern Ireland border and what happens to UK citizens living in the EU and those EU citizens living in the UK), or walk away from the negotiating table.