MILANO – The quarterly of Meta (the company of Facebook) supports the mood of investors, makes futures fly on the Nasdaq and projects the opening of trade in Europe towards positive ground. The social network, despite the decline in revenues, beat expectations from the point of view of earnings and its share has come to fly by almost 20% in the post-market on Wall Street.
However, volatility remains the main ingredient of the markets, even more so after the threats and counter-moves between Russia and the European Union on the gas front. The tug-of-war concerns the methods of payment for supplies: the Kremlin wants rubles, Europe tells importers not to fold to a request that would violate EU sanctions. Some operators are equipping themselves with the mechanism devised by Moscow: to open a second account, in rubles, at Gazprombank to which payments made in Western currency to the main current account would be automatically converted. Distributors in Germany, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia – including some of the major importers such as Uniper of Dusseldorf and OMV of Vienna – are preparing rubles c / c at Gazprombank in Switzerland according to the FT. L’Eniwhich is due for the next payment in the second half of May, is evaluating the situation.
Today, then, the eyes of investors are focused on estimate of the US GDP in the first quarter. Expectations are also expected for tomorrow’s data on consumer prices and GDP in the Eurozone. Wall Street finished low last night with the Dow Jones up 0.19% and the Nasdaq weak at -0.01%. However, a positive trend remained for the Asian lists: a Tokyo the Nikkei rises by 1.6%, Hong Kong adds or 0.25% while Shanghai it is weak and yields 0.5%.
The tension on the foreign exchange market instead starts from the yen, brought close to the alert level of 130 per dollar by the fact that the Bank of Japan confirmed its massive stimulus program and commitment to keep interest rates ultra-low, reinforcing its resolve to support the economy despite sharp increases in commodity costs are driving up inflation. “The BOJ expects short- and long-term interest rates to remain at their current levels or lower,” the bank said in a statement, leaving guidance from the previous March meeting unchanged. The move accentuated the strengthening of the dollar underway in this period, which also occurred against theeuro: the single currency is at its lowest since 2017.