In a rebut to the Brexit doom-mongers, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has announced, in their ‘Global Competitive Report 2016-2017’, that the United Kingdom has risen to seventh place in the league of the world’s most competitive economies, leapfrogging Hong Kong, Japan, and Finland.

The most recently released UK labour market figures, based on the May to July 2016 period, show the UK’s unemployment rate remains at 4.9%, down from the 5.5% recorded a year earlier. With 1.63 million people out of work, a fall of 39,000 from the Feb-April quarter and 190,000 less than the same period last year; its lowest level seen since the March-May 2008 quarter.

September brought a renewal of investor confidence in global equity markets, as most of the major UK indices covered here saw gains. Whilst gaining 1.74% over the month, the FTSE100 did, however, see some volatility, dipping to an intra-month low of 6,665.6, before recovering to end at 6,899.3 up 117.8 points. The wider FTSE250 fared less well adding 0.78% or 138.6 points,to close at 17,871.4, whilst the junior AIM market surpassed that, rising just over 27 points to 819.1 for an improvement of 3.51%.

Following the shock fall to a near eight-year low of 47.4 in July, the Markit/CIPS purchasing managers’ index (PMI) of the UK’s services sector, saw a very strong rebound to 52.9 (where any score above 50 represents growth in the sector) in August.

In an effort to ease ongoing fears surrounding oversupply, major oil exporting nations have reached a preliminary agreement which should see the reduction of oil production for the first time in eight years.