The early gains picked up the pace as Thursday went on, with the Eurozone leading the way as EU-US trade war concerns (slightly) receded.
With reports from German paper Handelsblatt suggesting Donald Trump is willing to hold off on imposing tariffs on EU car imports IF the region lifted duties on American cars, the Eurozone rocketed higher on Thursday. The DAX, which is also relieved that Angela Merkel appears to be holding the CDU-CSU coalition together, surged more than 150 points, grazing 12480 for the first time in 10 days. The CAC, meanwhile, jumped around 1%, with the IBEX climbing 1.1% and the FTSE MIB jumping 1.4%.
The FTSE couldn’t quite match the growth seen in the Eurozone; however, the UK index still rose half a percent, climbing back above 7600 in the process. The main thrust of its gains stemmed from the previously under pressure commodity stocks, with the miners especially benefiting from a bullish note from Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) claiming the sector had been ‘oversold’ in the recent trade war-fearing downturn.
Turning to this afternoon and the Dow Jones isn’t getting too excited just yet, with the futures pointing to a modest, 24300-crossing 80 point increase. In the run up to this evening’s FOMC meeting minutes the US has a few items of data to deal with: the Markit and ISM services PMIs are expected to come in at 56.5 and 58.3 respectively, while the ADP non-farm figure is forecast to rise from 178k to 190k.
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