At the start of the European trading session on Friday, FTSE was down by nearly 1% over news reports of US President’s latest announcement of tariffs on Mexico. In addition, weaker than expected Chinese PMI data also added to the risk-off sentiment in global markets.

FTSE 100 lost 0.8% while the FTSE 250 was down by about 0.9% just before trading commenced. In addition, it looks like both of them are set for their first monthly falls so far in 2019, losing 3.5% and 4.5% respectively in May.

Leading oil stocks also suffered losses on account of ongoing uncertainty of the trade war’s impact on global oil demand. To add to the bleak market sentiment, Nationwide reported a slowdown in growth of British house prices in May to 0.6%.

At the time of writing, FTSE is trading at around 7155.