(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) – The European stock exchanges travel sharply upwards by exploiting the exploit of the Asian lists pushed by the technological stocks thanks to the signals coming from Beijing which intervenes to provide more support to the Chinese economy in a slowdown phase and which is making progress in the dialogue with the United States concerning the rules for Chinese companies listed in the United States. An indication that is causing Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index to jump about 8%, with the tech sub-index gaining more than 20% led by Alibaba and Tencent, while the Shanghai Stock Exchange compound index rises by 3. % about. This is how the FTSE MIB in Milan, the CAC 40 in Paris, the DAX 40 in Frankfurt, the Ftse 100 in London, the IBEX 35 in Madrid and the AEX in Amsterdam take off. The Moscow Stock Exchange closed for the whole week.
The focus of the financial markets will be placed on the Federal Reserve, while investors are waiting to have confirmation that Russia pays coupons on the interest of two sovereign bonds (maturity 2023 and 2043) for a total of 117 million dollars: in recent days, the Ministry of Finance has given a mandate to make the expected payment. The attention of the market for these deadlines must be read in the context of the «default» risk of Moscow declared by the rating agencies and the tug-of-war with Western countries over the sanctions triggered by the aggression against Ukraine.
Banks in the front row in Milan, St with tech is also doing well
In Piazza Affari in the front row the banking stocks (among the best Unicredit, Bper, Intesa Sanpaolo and Banco Bpm). Moncler also rebounds, sensitive to a revival of the Chinese economy. Stmicroelectronics takes advantage of the brilliant performance of tech in Asia. Outside the Ftse Mib, the A shares of Mfe fall, reaching even more than 11 points: the group has announced a purchase and exchange offer on Mediaset Espana which provides for the issue of new A shares for the members who join. In Madrid, Mediaset Espana opened trading down by almost 5%.
Oil recovering, gas down
Oil prices resume rising after the slowdown of the last seven days which brought Brent back to under $ 100 a barrel (from a top of 133) and the WTI in the area of $ 95 (from the highs of 129). Both benchmark contracts are up around 2%: in London the Brent in May is traded at 102.1 dollars a barrel, the WTI in April marks 98 dollars a barrel. Natural gas prices are down in Europe, which on the Dutch Ttf platform drops 3% to 111.95 euros per megawatt hour. Among metals, attention is paid to nickel which will return to be traded on the London Metal Exchange after the suspension from 8 March due to the strong volatility and jump in prices linked to the Ukrainian crisis. Gold prices fell to 1917 dollars an ounce.
Spread increasing in the area of 160 basis points
Upward trend for the spread between BTp and Bund on the MTS secondary market of European government bonds. The yield differential between the ten-year benchmark BTp (Isin IT0005436693) and the same German maturity stands at 160 basis points, three more than the 157 basis points of the previous final. The 10-year Italian yield also rose to 1.94% from 1.91% reached on the eve of the day’s closing.