On Friday, the prospect of a double-dip recession managed to loom large on Friday, post official figures showing that retail sales in January managed to suffer their biggest monthly decline in 18 long moths.

Numbers shared by the Office of National Statistics revealed that sales volumes slipped by 1.8% over the past month, as compared to December. Excluding petrol, sales declined by 1.2%.

The actual figure was much worse than the average estimate of analyst, which stood at 0.5%.

It seems that the unusually cold January weather and the increase in VAT had an overall negative effect on retail sales. Even so, observers were quite taken aback with the disappointing figure.

"Given the VAT hike in January, and the fact that unusually bad weather had depressed consumer activity, the market had expected a fall in January; however, today's out-turn was well below expectations", said Varun Bhabha, analyst at Barclays Capital.