There was wasn’t much to say about Friday afternoon’s trading, a sparsity of relevant data, and a lack of progress on the market’s key macro-preoccupations, leading to a rather lacklustre session.
Though it came close, the FTSE couldn’t quite hit 7800, or surpass January’s all-time intraday high. To be fair to the index, it would have had to magic momentum out of nothing this Friday to do so. Brent Crude slunk back below $79.50 per barrel as the day went on, ruling that out as a boost; and while cable was down 0.3%, pushing sterling towards a fresh 4 month nadir, it wasn’t substantial enough a loss to reignite the UK index. There were also notable losses for some of the FTSE’s constituents, namely AstraZeneca's (LON:AZN) earnings-inspired 2.5% decline, and Glencore's (LON:GLEN) bribery probe-fearing 6% fall.
The eurozone was just as uninspired. The DAX spent the day dancing around 13100, coasting on yesterday’s oil-led growth without ever really threatening to build on those gains.
As for the Dow Jones, the index’s 50 point rise still leaves it shy of 24800, and means it is set to end the week at a loss. The return of trade war fears on Tuesday cut the legs from underneath the Dow just as it was using its early May momentum to climb towards 25000, with little – beyond Brent Crude’s brief $80 per barrel flirtation – in the fairly barren second half of the week to help the index rediscover its mojo.
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