FTSE for Friday: assessing the impact of Liberation Day
As investors continue to calculate the potential impact of new American trade policy, independent analyst Alistair Strang updates his forecasts for the blue-chip index.
4th April 2025 08:04
by Alistair Strang from Trends and Targets
The markets are behaving as if the USA has declared war, despite a tariff regime which shall make things more expensive for their own populace. Creating a regime, where BMW, Mercedes, Range Rover are suddenly 25% more expensive than competing vehicles will certainly ruffle feathers. But will Americans decide a Ford or GM badge has the same cachet as a Range Rover?
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While historically USA protectionism has produced extremely messy results, we're now in different times when the results of such a change of stance will happen quite a bit faster.
For the FTSE 100, we lack any degree of enthusiasm for the near term. Currently, we can calculate movement below 8,450 should trigger further reversals to an initial 8,400 with our secondary, if broken, coming in at an eventual 8,230 points and hopefully a bounce.
Otherwise, to pretend confidence, near-term gains above 8,470 should trigger recovery to an initial 8,553 with our secondary, if beaten, at 8,596 points.
To be honest, the only thing we've confidence in is the Japanese Grand Prix race being entertaining this weekend as it feels unlikely the FTSE shall deliver anything to smile about.
Have a good weekend.
Source: Trends and Targets. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
Alistair Strang has led high-profile and "top secret" software projects since the late 1970s and won the original John Logie Baird Award for inventors and innovators. After the financial crash, he wanted to know "how it worked" with a view to mimicking existing trading formulas and predicting what was coming next. His results speak for themselves as he continually refines the methodology.
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