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 …
We saw similar volumes to the previous week as a fantastic month for Equiduct came to a close.
The week was dominated by US currency concerns and corporate earnings results.
The volatility wasn’t so much due to the drop in the value of the dollar but more a result of the fact that the current administration seemed to be fairly happy about it.
Donald Trump has said previously that he felt the dollar was overvalued and that this made US exports less competitive.
Microsoft results triggered a market sell off on Thursday whilst the expected hold in US rates had little impact.
For Equiduct, January was a record turnover month which came in just short of €12billion. This was the third time in a year that we have broken turnover records.
It was also a record month for average daily volumes and ASML and BBVA both beat the previous monthly record for highest turnover for a stock in a single month.
The two heavyweight stocks combined turned over was more than €1.2billion with ASML just edging ahead in the final week, turning over €69million on Wednesday after releasing Q4 results.
Earnings season always sees a boost in volumes when results don’t match analyst expectations and this was the case on Wednesday when LVMH turned over €41million and again on Friday when Caixa turned over €30million.
This week …
I’m expecting to see high volumes again. A third of the STOXX 600 are due to release results this week along with some big names in the US.
Amazon and Alphabet announce later in the week whilst some of Equiduct’s most popular stocks, including Santander, BBVA, Sabadell, BNP and Shell, all release results this week.
French and Italian inflation figures are due this week whilst we have interest rate decisions from the BOE and ECB coming on Thursday.
US jobs figures finish off a busy week on Friday.
It was a fairly quiet week for geopolitical news last week but I wouldn’t be surprised if we got some big news this week.
The US/Iran stand off feels like it’s about to come to a head with a large US fleet in place in the middle east. I have the feeling we’ll either see US military action or some sort of deal will be agreed this week.
So lots of different factors in play this week which could shape market activity.
Even if there is no big geopolitical news and if the interest rate decisions go as expected, the high number of corporate earnings releases should alone be enough to make it a busy week for markets.
Let’s see how the week unfolds.
That’s all from me, until next week… Happy investing!
Carl
