European equity markets have been struggling to keep their heads above water during today’s session as investors continued to worry about the lack of recovery in the oil price. We could well be look at a situation where we see relative calm ahead of the next weeks key Fed interest rate decision. It’s not uncommon to see a brief period of low volatility and volume before major announcements, if you couple that with the normal slowdown in volume around the festive period we could well be looking at investors sitting on their hands waiting for next week’s data.
That being said we have still seem some news flow and movements in markets as the major US indices pushed higher, recovering from the heavy falls of the last couple of days. There has also been some data out today as Europe came into focus again. German import and export figures should further declines as the problems in Europe highlighted themselves yet again.
The ECB moves last week are designed to kick start industry and get these numbers moving in the right direction. EURUSD has pushed higher yet again today pushing closer to 1.1000 level, after threatening to test 1.0000 at the beginning of last week. Yet again this is going to be an area that will have one eye on the Fed as we approach next Wednesday’s meeting.
Oil is of course still a story and oil companies and miners have recovered from some of the lows seen during yesterday’s session. The issue with oil is that there is no sign of an end in the falls and we could well see oil below $50 a barrel for a large bulk of 2016. Mining stocks such as Glencore (L:GLEN) and Rio Tinto (L:RIO) surged back into the green today with Ashtead (L:AHT) topping the list of gainers adding 9% after the company reported better than expected numbers.