After the Trump-led theatrics of the last few days the European markets kept pretty quiet at Thursday’s open, likely tentative ahead of this afternoon’s ECB rate vote and subsequent press conference.
The week’s trade war concerns have seemingly been put on the back burner for the moment, allowing investors to give their full attention to what Mario Draghi and co. have in store. The ECB chief has been notably less hawkish than his US and UK peers of late, though there is still room for a bit of tinkering with the exact wording and tone of the central bank’s message, especially in regards to the eventual unwinding of QE.
There’s still a while to go until Draghi takes the stand, however, leaving things in a stifling state of anticipation. The forex markets were resolute in their inaction, with the euro, dollar and pound refusing to budge from their opening positions.
There was a bit more movement from the European indices, but not by much. The FTSE dipped 0.1%, but held at 7150, while the CAC rose 0.2% to lurk just below 5200 and the DAX added a handful of points as it tried to return to 12250.
Investors were clearly hungry this Thursday, gobbling up Domino’s (LON:DOM) after the fast food firm produced a 10% leap in its full year underlying pre-tax profit to £94.4 million off the back of a record 97 million pizzas sold during 2017. This kind of growth swiftly reversed the losing streak Domino’s had been on for the last month or so, and helped alleviate some of investors’ fears over the state of the UK food sector, sending the stock more than 8% higher to a 5 week peak of £3.45.
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