Though the losses eased somewhat as the session went on, the markets remained in the red on Monday.
The Dow Jones dove as much as 250 points as US trading began, only to trim its losses to around 100 points, just above allowing the index to heave itself back across 28500. That’s against the 28900 all-time highs struck at the start of the New Year.
The DAX managed the biggest recovery – of sorts – on Monday, more than halving its opening decline to a more manageable 0.5%. The CAC was in a similar situation, reducing its losses to 0.2%.
Despite being heavy with companies pleased at current US-Iran crisis – BP (LON:BP) and Shell (LON:RDSa) were up 2.6% and 1.1% respectively thanks to oil’s own gains, while arms manufacturer BAE Systems (LON:BAES) jumped 1.6% for obvious reasons – the FTSE couldn’t shake its half a percent loss.
That’s in part because the pound got a boost following the latest UK services PMI, which came in at 50.0 against the 49.1 expected and the 49.0 seen the previous month. A much-needed bit of positivity for the currency – last week it was plagued by Brexit anxiety and terrible manufacturing and construction PMIs – enough to send it 0.5% higher against the dollar and 0.4% against the euro.
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