While they haven’t gone away, the market’s losses failed to significantly intensify as the day went on, investors caught between their concerns over reports that Trump is set to fire another tariff-shot at China and the reassurances of economic adviser Larry Kudlow that nothing is set in stone and that the President isn’t gunning for a trade war.
The FTSE fared best out of the European indices – despite Citigroup (NYSE:C)-prompted 3% declines from both Next (LON:NXT) and M&S (LON:MKS) – with a negligible 0.1% dip, one that takes the index away from 7200 but still leaves it aggressively up on the abbreviated week.
The DAX and CAC were a lot grumpier, but even then their respective 0.7% and 0.5% means they’ve only lost a fraction of the super-charged growth they managed on Thursday.
With the Dow Jones looking at a 170 point drop after the bell, however, the situation in Europe may become a bit more severe as US traders get more involved. In amidst all this tariff-talk comes the latest non-farm jobs report, a data set that may struggle to make itself heard above all the macro-chatter.
For what it’s worth, analysts are expecting the headline figure to fall quite sharply from 313k to 190k month-on-month, but with the unemployment rate dipping to 4.0% and average hourly earnings bouncing from 0.1% to 0.3%.
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