Last week …
Was a relatively quiet one with lower volumes and little drama. Numerous market holidays on Thursday contributed to that being the quietest day of the week.
Friday saw a market sell off with oil continuing to rise and no progress in peace talks between Iran and the US. The STOXX 600 had a losing week.
Paris extended its run as most traded market on Equiduct, whilst Frankfurt was also relatively busy with Rheinmetall and Bayer both in the top twenty most traded stocks.
US inflation numbers came in hotter than expected raising fears of interest rate rises before the end of the year.
Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jingping, which had the potential to be volatile. Not a great deal came out of the meeting however and there was nothing to move markets.
IAG was our most traded stock on Monday after announcing a bond buy back scheme and turned over €35million. Q1 results continued to generate volatility with Telefonica our second most traded stock on Thursday and Siemens busy on Friday.
This week …
Looks light on major Economic events but still has the potential for volatility.
We have flash PMI releases for the UK and several Eurozone countries along with UK inflation data.
The main event of the week looks to be Nvidia’s Q1 results which are due after markets close on Wednesday. It’s been a bullish few weeks for Tech stocks as results continue to exceed expectations and huge amounts of capital continue to be invested in AI. Nvidia results are again expected to be strong but how strong do they need to be to keep the bulls happy? I’m expecting ASML to be well traded on Equiduct again this week.
With Trump’s meeting with China now out of the way, could we get some progress in the Middle East? He warned Iran again over the weekend that “the clock is ticking” and it feels like something will happen soon one way or another. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is putting increasing pressure on economies around the world. So a deal is needed quickly now. But what deal can Trump make at this point that will allow him to claim this conflict as an American success? A return to war is an increasing possibility but can the US achieve regime change without boots on the ground? That could add months to this conflict and it does feel like there is no easy way out of this for the US.
Any sort of Middle East progress has been met by a surge in the markets over the last couple of months but it has rarely led to anything substantial. I’m not sure investors are going to be so quick to buy again without something more concrete looking this time. It continues to be a huge potential source of volatility for markets so let’s see what happens this week.
That’s all from me, until next week… Happy investing!
Carl
