Piazza Affari cautious at the end of the eighth, eyes focused on next week’s Fed and ECB

A slow day for the European stock exchanges, in the absence of significant events and in anticipation of the central bank meetings scheduled for next week.
In Piazza Affari, the Ftse Mib closed up by 0.14% to 28,855.09 points, with purchases in particular from Recordati (+5%) after the agreement with GSK for the marketing of new products in 21 countries. Inwit (+0.1%), Banca Generali (+0.8%) and Eni (+0.7%) also did well, while Leonardo (-1.7%), Iveco (-1.2%) and Stm (-1.1%) lost ground.
Meanwhile, on Wall Street, the S&P500 (+0.3%) and Nasdaq (+0.2%) advanced slightly after yesterday’s declines triggered by disappointing quarterly reports from Tesla and Netflix and by falling data on weekly jobless claims.
According to data collected by Bloomberg, the top 86 stocks of the S&P 500 index beat the consensus on sales in 54.6% of cases and 79% forecasts on profits. The results of other giants such as Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta Platforms are scheduled for next week.
The spotlights are above all on the decisions of the Fed and the ECB (scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday respectively), which will raise rates by 25 basis points and will in all probability maintain a data-dependent approach.
In the morning, data on Japanese inflation was released, slightly higher than expected (3.3% in June), to be assessed in view of next Friday’s BoJ meeting. UK retail sales showed a stronger-than-expected increase, underscoring the resilience of consumption despite high inflation.
On Forex, the euro/dollar stabilized at 1.113 while the dollar/yen recovered to 141.6 following rumors that the BoJ (which will meet on Friday) will keep its yield curve control program unchanged.
Among the raw materials, oil (Brent) remains above 80 dollars a barrel. Limited movements in the bond segment, with the Btp-Bund spread just over 160 bp and the Italian 10-year bond down to 4.6%.