My views are my own and they do not constitute investment advice. My views are derived from Equiduct’s unique data set which represents a clean retail signal free of distortion from institutional investors and therefore are telling of what the sentiment of European retail investors is.
Without further ado, let’s dive right into it!
Last week …
Was particularly volatile. It was the busiest week of the year so far with Equiduct turning over just under €3.6billion.
The Middle East conflict was the main driver with Monday and Tuesday seeing a significant sell off.
Things began to quieten down on Thursday before markets were hit with another flurry of volatility on Friday afternoon when US jobs figures came in much worse than expected.
Non farms figures saw the biggest monthly drop since the pandemic and raised concerns about the health of the US economy.
Despite this, Santander was again the most traded stock on Equiduct last week, turning over €210million. This stock has had a really busy start to the year.
IAG was the second most traded stock last week as the airline industry took a big hit from cancelled flights and rising fuel prices.
Unsurprisingly, energy companies Repsol and Total Energies were also in the top five most traded stocks.
This week …
Will again be dominated by developments in the Middle East. The outlook remains bearish.
Oil prices have surged past $100 a barrel with no sign of a quick resolution in sight.
The US has tried to calm the market by offering insurance to ships willing to risk the straits of Hormuz and by lifting some restrictions on Russian oil.
This is unlikely to have a great impact however and there is still much anxiety regarding how high prices could go.
US inflation numbers are due this week, but the situation is evolving rapidly with rising oil prices stoking inflationary fires and pushing any potential interest rate cuts back towards Q4.
There are still some Q4 earnings reports to come this week, mostly in Germany.
Rheinmetall, Deutsche Bank, Volkswagen, BMW and Porsche are all due to announce figures so we could see some extra volatility in German markets.
So its set to be another busy week for energy stocks and probably weapons manufacturers too. Travel and leisure companies are also likely to be well traded.
Will there be any further shock news this week? Russia? Trump? AI? So many potential sources of volatility. Let’s see how the week unfolds.
That’s all from me, until next week… Happy investing!
Carl
