This week also begins with the 75th anniversary of the British withdrawal from the Indian subcontinent, marking the partition of India and Pakistan. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to address the nation from the historic Red Fort in Delhi with a likely focus on the problems in Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim-majority state. For UK students, it’s the present as students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland receive emails and folders containing their A-level and vocational results on Thursday. The work of getting accepted and finding university places through the clearance process will then begin in earnest. As with the Advanced Higher exam scores announced for Scottish school students last week, A-level results are expected to be down on last year, but likely up on pre-pandemic years. Exam body AQA said papers would be graded more generously to reflect the return to normal testing conditions. The UK’s summer of discontent will be marked by another national rail strike this week, compounded by a general strike on London’s public transport networks. Next Sunday, more than 1,900 workers at Britain’s biggest container port Felixstowe are set to strike, while we have another week of criminal barristers’ strike at courts in England and Wales with no resolution. We are about to take a major step forward in Nasa’s Artemis space program. The mission’s goal is to land the first female and minority astronaut on the Moon, preparing for a long-term lunar presence and providing a stepping stone to sending humans to Mars. Nasa plans to live stream the Artemis 1 rocket’s transfer to the launch pad on Wednesday with the goal of completing liftoff by the end of the month.
Financial data
Inflation watchers will remain busy this week with updates from the EU, Japan and Canada, and on Wednesday, the release of the latest minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting may give some indication of the Fed’s willingness to tighten. monetary policy. It will also be a busy week for UK economic news with data on employment, inflation, productivity, retail sales, consumer confidence and house prices. Everyone is likely to gather comments on the state of UK plc.
Companies
This week we reach the end of the current reporting season with results from a group of retailers that are either purely online or have benefited heavily from e-commerce, notably Walmart on Tuesday, Target and Tencent a day later and AO World on Thursday. AO World is trying to shift its business model away from increasing sales to generating and maintaining margins. The problem for these retailers as we enter an economic slowdown will be maintaining sufficient sales demand. Read the full calendar for the week here.
