MILANO – The European stock exchanges open down the day after the indications coming from the minutes of the Fed and those coming from the ECB, which today will present the new monetary policy strategy. From the minutes of the US Central Bank it emerged that according to some members of the board, the conditions for starting a tapering of Quantitative easing were “somehow achieved earlier than anticipated”. However, the markets did not read in the reports of the works of the FOMC, the monetary policy arm of the Fed, excessively “hawkish” tones from the bank. The expectation of investors is instead turned towards Frankfurt this afternoon, where Christine Lagarde will present the new monetary policy strategies of the ECB, revising in particular the inflation target from “close to but below 2%” to 2%.
Since the morning, the European indices have been falling sharply, weighed down by fears for the spread of the Delta variant. Milano loses 1.27%, London 0.98%, Frankfurt 0.85% e Paris 1.1%. The new Chinese squeeze against hi-tech companies bends the Asian markets: in particular Hong Kong suffering, which sells i. 2.6% and Tokyo which closes at -0.88%.
Among the currencies, there was little movement for the euro. The currency is trading at 1.1798 dollars at the start of the day (1.1789 last night in New York) while on the yen the single currency changes hands at 130.5. The spread is slightly up: the differential between BTP and German Bund opens slightly to 102 basis points, compared to 104 points at yesterday’s closing, with the yield of the Italian 10-year falling to 0.72%.
Truce for the Petroleum after the fluctuations of the last few days: the Texas WTI thus still falls fractionally compared to last night’s values just above 72 dollars a barrel at 72.02 (-0.2%) the Brent at 73.38 dollars (-0, 07%).
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