Market update - December 2018

December was a difficult month for company shares globally which meant that 2018 saw falls for nearly all the leading global equity markets:

	December 2018	Full Year 2018
FTSE 100 (UK)	-3.6%	-12.5%
Dow Jones 30 (US)	-8.7%	-5.6%
S&P 500 (US)	-9.2%	-6.2%
DAX (Germany)	-6.2%	-18.3%
Euro Stoxx 50 (Europe)	-5.4%	-14.3%
Nikkei 225 (Japan)	-10.5%	-12.1%

Most of our cautious portfolios have been sheltered from much of these falls and some are showing a fractional increase in performance over 2018. In terms of currency, £ Sterling ended December at 1.28 US Dollars.  This was more or less flat against the closing figure at the end of November. Against the Euro, £ Sterling ended December at 1.11 Euros, which was 1.3% lower than the November closing figure. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH), was 2.2% in November 2018 (this is November’s data which is reported in December).  This was the same as the previous two months.  The 12-month rate for the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rate which excludes owner occupied housing costs and council tax was 2.3% in November 2018, which was down from the 2.4% in October 2018.