UK inflation initially caught the market by surprise this week. The consumer price index had been forecast to post a year on year increase of 3.3% to April but instead came in at a stronger 3.5%.

This was a week of central banks sitting down to set their latest monetary policy. In the UK the Bank of England reduced the base rate by 0.25%, which was in line with expectations, to 4.25%. The vote was by no means unanimous, however. Two member of the committee voted for a larger cut of 0.5%.

After all of the news we have had to digest over the last month or so, who would have thought that, at the time of writing, the FTSE 100 would be poised to complete its longest winning streak on record, consisting of 15 consecutive days when the market has risen.

Are lessons being learned? Whilst some comfort had previously been taken from the news that upcoming tariffs had been paused by 90 days, with the exception of those on China, investment markets have still remained unsettled, with uncertainty being seen in both equity and fixed income markets in the US.

When I was young, admittedly a long time ago, the above was the verse which was preached to me as a way of remembering the green cross code.

For many months markets and investors have been focussed on US non-farm payroll data, with this seen as a proxy for how well the economy was performing.