After a sore start to December, the Eurozone were keen on forgetting yesterday’s losses. After the bell, indices across the continent looked determined to live by the mantra of ‘it can’t get any worse’, and subsequently decided to shake off Trump’s overnight threats to implement a series of tariffs on $2.4 billion worth of French goods.
And shake off the threats they did, somewhat successfully even. Most of the markets saw some form of rebound, and the French bourse didn’t even end up being the worst-hit casualty of morning trading – that coveted spot was reserved for the FTSE. Perhaps then, while uncomfortable and disruptive, Trump’s threats are just something indices will learn to live with and get used to, and with time, hopefully ignore.
Speaking on Trump’s attempts to ruin markets’ fun, Spreadex Financial Analyst Connor Campbell commented,
“Severely stung by Trump restoring tariffs on Brazil and Argentina on Monday, the markets coped surprisingly well with the President’s overnight threat to France.”
“The Trump administration has proposed new tariffs on $2.4 billion of French goods, including typically Gallic fare like cheese and champagne, in retaliation to the country’s new digital services tax, one that quite rightly would hit the wallets of American tech monoliths Amazon, Google and Facebook.”
“Instead of suffering another round of serious losses, the Eurozone markets broadly rebounded. And, to be fair, they have plenty of ground to recover – Monday was a nasty, nasty start to December. The DAX jumped 80 points as it pushed back past 13000, with the FTSE MIB rising 1% and the IBEX up 0.5%. The notable, obvious exception was the CAC, which could only eke out a 0.1% increase; not bad, however, given the situation between the US and France.”
“The French bourse wasn’t even Tuesday’s worst performing major index. The FTSE sank another 0.4% after the bell, falling to a one and a half week low as it was hurt by the troubled state of its commodity stocks and a bounce from sterling.”
“The pound added 0.2% against dollar and euro alike, leaving it at a near 7-month peak against the former and back above €1.171 against the latter. This despite the Tories’ ever-shrinking lead in the polls and the prospect of a terrible, if improved, construction PMI.”
Elsewhere this morning; Nokia Corporation (HEL: NOKIA) announced it would transform Finland’s national grid to support renewables, Solid State plc (LON: SOLI) boasted significant profit growth during the half-year, Centamin PLC (LON: CEY) rejected a merger approach, and retail sales were down during November in a year-on-year comparison.
