Tuesday afternoon turned into a macro-car crash, with Brexit fears, the post-APEC pre-G20 US-China trade war flare-up and the continuation of a nasty US tech sell-off resulting in absolute carnage.
The Dow Jones was a bloody mess soon after the bell rang on Wall Street. Shedding more than 550 points, the plunge below 24500 as trading got underway, returning to the lows seen at the end of October.
As a taster of the alarming tech trouble, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was down 4.6%, tumbling to a near 7 month low of $177 having been at $230 around 7 weeks ago; Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) fell by the same amount, with their Dow sibling Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) slipping 2.2%. Investors are concerned that sooner rather than later the sector is going to be fully embroiled in the US-China trade battle, exacerbating the softness caused by reports of a slowdown in iPhone demand.
Obviously this caused the already moody European indices to have a fit. The CAC found itself the wrong side of 4900 as it lost 1.6%, with the DAX hitting a near 2 year nadir after dropping 200 points. The FTSE, meanwhile, slid 90 points, slumping back towards the 6900 lows seen during October’s nightmare.
In amongst all this, of course, were sterling’s attempts to negotiate the ongoing Brexit developments. That did appear to play second fiddle to the US-driven news, however. Like the euro it found itself down against the dollar, with cable dropping 0.3% to sit at $1.2815; yet against the single currency it rose 0.2%, just about grazing €1.125 in the process.
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