Following a choppy performance last week, especially in Europe, investors sat on their hands at the start of Monday’s trading.
It was another weekend full of disappointments. Like the UK last Wednesday, Japan just posted its worst GDP contraction on record – though it’s a stark warning of how bad things are over here that the Japanese drop was 7.8% to the UK’s 20.4% for the April to June quarter.
Meanwhile the teased, but never officially confirmed, videoconference trade talks between the USA and China were postponed indefinitely. Reuters is reporting that the delay has come about due to scheduling conflicts and the need to allow Beijing more time to buy up American exports as dictated by the phase one deal. It’s hard to know had to take the delay – in a sense, given the chaos of the last couple of months it has at least prevented things from getting any worse.
Add in an empty economic calendar, and it was difficult for the European markets to get a feel for what direction they should be heading in.
The FTSE – which had a hell of a time of it last week, with 6300-nearing highs and sub-6050 lows – added a handful of points, trying to muster the energy to retake 6100.
The DAX put in a similar performance, scraping together a 0.2% rise to 12930, while the CAC wasn’t fussed, starting the session unchanged just below 4970.
As for the Dow Jones, it currently is set to go done the French root, opening unmoved at 27925.
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