There wasn’t a lot of good news going around this Thursday, keeping the markets stuck in the quicksand of their interest rate fears.
The extent of the UK market’s pre-existing headache meant that the unexpected downward revision to the UK Q4 GDP reading didn’t actually make too much of a difference – of course, it didn’t help matters either. For the final quarter of 2017 the UK economy grew by just 0.4%, not the 0.5% initially thought; on a year-on-year basis the country’s Q4 GDP came in at 1.4%, almost half of that managed by the eurozone as a whole, and way off the USA’s 2.5%.
This left the pound down 0.4% against the dollar, with cable struggling under $1.39, and 0.3% against the euro, where sterling finds itself back below €1.13. The FTSE, meanwhile, maintained its 1.1% decline, the near 5% rise seen by Barclays (LON:BARC) mattering little to the macro-focused index.
As for the eurozone, the region’s indices weren’t in quite such a foul mood this Thursday, though the DAX and CAC still fell 0.7% and 0.5% respectively. Still to come are the ECB meeting minutes from last month, a release unlikely to be anywhere near as hawkish as Wednesday’s Fed notes.
Turning to the US open and the European markets may be able to ease their losses if the Dow Jones can furthering last night’s decline. Currently the Dow is facing a flat start, one that would still admitted leave the index the wrong side of 24800 for the first time in 8 days. There’s not real data to speak of, so it’ll be interesting to see whether the negative sentiment sparked by those Fed notes last night carries over into today’s US session.
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