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 relatively calm by recent standards with far lower volumes than earlier in the month.
Monday and Tuesday were the busiest days with volatility fuelled by the Middle East conflict.
Santander was the most traded stock at the start of the week before Rheinmetall took top spot on Wednesday after releasing Q4 results.
BBVA was the busiest stock on Thursday whilst Total Energies was number one on Friday.
Energy companies saw the biggest gains last week with Repsol, Total Energies and Shell all in the top ten most traded.
We saw huge swings in oil prices at the start of the week and the International Energy Agency moved to calm fears by releasing 400million barrels of reserves.
Paris was the most traded market last week on Equiduct with turnover of just under €900million. Total Energies contributed a large share of this whilst BNP, LVMH and Stellantis were all well traded.
This week …
Will almost certainly again be dominated by the Middle East conflict with Donald Trump desperately trying to get oil and gas flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.
The longer the war drags on the greater the risk to world markets. The Iranian leadership regime is still in power and their ability to disrupt the Strait is one of their biggest levers.
This is not the only driver of volatility this week however. Interest rate decisions are due from around the globe including the US, ECB and BOE along with updates from Japan, Canada, Switzerland and Sweden.
Central bankers are in a difficult position as they cannot cut interest rates to stimulate markets if energy prices continue to rise and push inflation higher. US markets have not been as badly affected as European markets despite three consecutive weeks of losses for the S&P 500. The STOXX 600 is down around 5.5% so far in March.
Nvidia’s annual Global Technology Conference starts on Monday and runs for most of the week. There is definitely potential for some tech stock volatility on the back of this with the latest AI news ready to stir the markets.
So a potent cocktail is brewing this week with numerous geopolitical and economic events that could potentially unleash a storm of volatility. The VIX index remains high and the outlook is probably bearish again this week.
That’s all from me, until next week… Happy investing!
Carl
