A mostly negative day for the European stock exchanges, also held back by the weakness of Wall Street in the wake of Friday’s job report which called into question the hypotheses of a less restrictive Fed. Instead, Piazza Affari resists above parity, with the Ftse Mib up by 0.3% to 27,022 points.
Sales in particular on Moncler (-2.25%), Stm (-2.2%) and Finecobank (-1.9%). Going against the trend is Telecom Italia (+3.2%), waiting for a possible counter-offer from CDP for the network, after the non-binding proposal put forward by KKR which will be examined by the Board of Directors on 24 February.
Purchases also on Banco Bpm (+2.7%) and Intesa Sanpaolo (+2.7%), promoted by analysts after the quarterly results released on Friday. Among these, Jp Morgan (overweight) raises the target price from 2.8 to 2.9 euros, Equita (buy) from 2.9 to 3.3 euros, Société Generale (buy) increases the target price from 2.45 to 2.6 euros, Intermonte (outperform) from 3.0 to 3.20 euros, while Bank of America moved from neutral to buy with a target price rising from 2.7 to 3.25 euros.
On the bond front, the Btp-Bund spread widens to 185 basis points with the Italian ten-year yield rising to 4.14%. On Forex, the euro/dollar drops again to 1.073, while among raw materials oil travels slowly, with Brent at 80.4 dollars a barrel, after the drop of the last eighth.
As for the macro data, in December, German factory orders recorded a monthly increase of 3.2% and an annual decline of 10.1%, better than expected. Eurozone retail sales, on the other hand, fell 2.7% monthly and 2.8% annually in December, worse than estimates.
Tomorrow, attention will shift mainly to a speech by Jerome Powell at the Economic Club of Washington. Geopolitical tensions are also returning to the fore, after the shooting down of the Chinese balloon by the US and the cancellation of the visit by US Secretary of State Blinken. Furthermore, the US is ready to impose 200% sanctions on Russian aluminum.