By Rupert Hargreaves

Copyright cityam

The FTSE 100 has had a slightly rocky start to the week. After more than half an hour of trading, London’s blue chip index dropped by a little less than 0.1 per cent.

Hargreaves Lansdown’s head of markets Susannah Street said there was a “wait and see mood” among traders given the avalanche of key data to be released and policy decisions to be made this week.

There’s been a flurry of announcements this morning as the UK gears up for US President Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK this week.

This morning, it was announced that the UK and the US are set to sign a landmark agreement aimed at accelerating the development of nuclear power.

The two countries have also signed a defence and security deal with Google Cloud. And over the weekend, it emerged Google is in talks to build a mammoth datacentre on a site in the northeast of England.

Other trade deals and announcements are expected over the coming days.

Meanwhile, in the markets this week we’re expecting trading updates from Kier Group, and Trustpilot on Tuesday. Barratt, Redrow, and Next are set to report their full-year and half-year results later in the week. Investec is slated to report results on Friday.

On Tuesday, we’ll also get the latest UK unemployment data. The UK unemployment rate is expected to remain steady at 4.7 per cent, while wages are also expected to continue their upward trend.

Spot gold is at $3,644, taking a breather after its record-breaking rally last week.