Reversing a decent chunk of Wednesday’s hard to justify gains, the FTSE fell far faster than its European peers on Thursday morning.
Dropping 1.1%, the UK index slipped back to 6220, having neared – but failed – to close at 6300 during yesterday’s recession-ignoring surge. It seems that investors aren’t feeling quite so confident in the FTSE now that the dust has settled on the latest GDP data.
A blanket sheet of red covered the index’s commodity sector, with Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) and Anglo American (LON:AAL) the worst hit, while the banking stocks also opened at a loss.
Arguably the Eurozone indices should’ve been worse off. The US maintained its tariffs on Airbus aircraft – an argument that predates both the Trump and Obama administrations – and goods like wine and single malt whisky from the continent, but failed to escalate the situation with fresh tariffs on vodka, gin and beer. It is this latter point that prevented a sell-off, with the DAX and CAC instead essentially flat at 13060 and 5075 respectively.
As for the Dow Jones, after closing just under 28000 last night, the US index is set to drop 30 points when trading gets underway. Its open, however, is likely contingent on the state of the session’s jobless claims figure – facing a 21st consecutive week of 7-digit readings, analysts are expecting a slight decrease, from 1.186 million to 1.12 million. Still alarmingly high, but a welcome improvement nevertheless.
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