Last week’s big event fell late on Friday with a stonking result for Non-Farm Payrolls in the USA, far ahead of expectations and strongly supporting a call for interest rate rises from the Fed this year. Higher rates normally help a currency, but if traders think hikes will squeeze growth, the “good news” can land with a thud. The inflation reading on Wednesday may settle the matter, so it could be a turbulent week. This might be good for the dollar but it’s bad for business and US stocks, especially AI/tech stocks, fell last week.

Helping business, the oil price remains well below $100. Over the weekend Iran restarted firing missiles at Israel, yet in theory the USA-Iran ceasefire is still in play. Part of America’s jobs burst is down to hospitality companies staffing up for the World Cup, which starts this week. With the Iran team being welcomed by the USA to play in California for two weeks, could ‘football diplomacy’ have any impact? President Trump did, after all, win the FIFA Peace Prize.

For sterling we continue in a quiet period for data, but there are reports on our current shopping mood. Two reports out last week showed shoppers returning to the high street – prompted by the warmer weather – and we’ll hear more on that from the BRC Retail Sales Monitor tomorrow morning.

However, for sterling the economic data point of the week will be Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on Friday, which analysts predict will have fallen by 0.1% in April. On which point, in business news, government minister Peter Kyle said at the weekend that the government would be taking a “aggressive” stake in fast-growing British companies in an effort to jump-start economic growth and reverse the brain drain of great British startups moving overseas.