Last week …
Was another busy one for Equiduct with volumes of just short of €2.9billion. Wednesday was by far the busiest day with turnover north of €850million on the back of raised hopes for a permanent ceasefire in the Middle East.
On Friday, Non-farm payrolls came in better than expected and showed that the US Economy appears to be in good health. It was the second month in a row of US job creation. We didn’t see much of an uptick in volumes as a result however.
Santander was again the most traded stock on Equiduct last week followed by ASML in second. We saw higher levels of trading in Technology stocks after AMD announced strong numbers on Tuesday. Third placed Soitec is another stock that has been heavily traded on Equiduct recently, with its price surging in May.
Paris was the most traded market on Equiduct last week with Soitec, Total Energies and LVMH all in the top ten traded. Amsterdam and Frankfurt also had their busiest weeks in some time whilst Milan continued the recent trend of higher volumes.
This week …
Has plenty of potential for volatility with numerous events that could stimulate markets.
US inflation figures are due tomorrow and will be followed by PPI numbers and Retail sales on Wednesday and Thursday. The S&P 500 has continued to soar in recent weeks and could go higher again this week.
We’ll get the latest German ZEW Index update and UK growth figures are scheduled for Thursday.
The Middle East conflict continues to cast a shadow over markets and has the potential to cause volatility at any point. Wednesday last week was a prime example as markets all of a sudden surged as hopes over a permanent ceasefire were raised. Nothing really came of it and this has happened a few times now. I’m a little surprised how much markets have moved over the Middle East conflict, often based on very little concrete evidence of progress. The latest Iranian proposal over the weekend was dismissed by Trump as “Totally unacceptable”.
Trump’s attention will be diverted elsewhere later this week as he meets Chinese President Xi Jingping for talks. This is another potential source of headlines this week and it will be interesting to see what comes of it.
Several Equiduct markets have holidays scheduled this week with all the Nordic markets closed on Thursday along with Zurich. Copenhagen is also closed on Friday.
I think it will be difficult to beat last week’s high turnover numbers but we have plenty of events this week that could trigger volatility. Will Tech stocks continue to surge ahead of Nvidia’s results next week or will there be a drop this week? Most of the big names have released Q1 numbers now but we still have a steady flow of smaller stocks releasing figures over the week. Will Trump’s Chinese talks go smoothly or will we get more drama? It should be an interesting week ahead.
That’s all from me, until next week… Happy investing!
Carl
