Milan’s Ftse Mib closes trading above parity (+0.1% to 27,235 points), supported by the performance of the other continental lists and Wall Street.
Among the blue chips of Piazza Affari, Stm (+3.5%) and Saipem (+3.3%) are advancing, the latter after the signing of new offshore contracts for a total of 850 million. A2a decreased (-4.1%), on which Intesa cut its judgment to Hold (from buy) while raising the target price to 1.87 euros (from 1.59). The other utilities are also bad, in particular Hera (-3.8%) and Italgas (-2.6%), with the rise in bond yields.
Well tuned Wall Street after the words of the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, on the fact that an agreement on the debt ceiling will be considered next week.
From today’s macro agenda came the US data on weekly claims for unemployment benefits (down to 242,000, below expectations) and those for April on trade sentiment from the Philadelphia Fed (up above the estimates at -10.4 points), the leading index (-0.6%) and existing home sales (-3.4%).
Bond yields on the rise, with the US two-year rate at 4.22% and the 10-year rate at 3.64%, after the words of the president of the Dallas Fed, Lorie Logan, according to which a pause in the restrictive cycle in June remains uncertain .
The Btp-Bund spread remains little moved at 185 bp with the Italian ten-year yield rising to 4.3%. On Forex, the dollar strengthened for the third consecutive day, with the EUR/USD slipping below 1.08, while oil (Brent) lost ground to 76 dollars a barrel.