Daily commentary – European and US stock markets -13 February 2014

European markets

European markets followed suit from their US counterparts’ yesterday performance and opened lower today, thus ending six days on green territory. At the time of writing UK’s FTSE100 was down by 0.80% to 6,624.91, France’s CAC40 was falling by 0.53% to 4,282.65 and Germany’s DAX30 was declining by 0.42% to 9,500.30. German electric utilities company RWE AG was the top earner in DAX30, advancing by 2.15% to 28.495 EUR while Imperial Tobacco Group plc was the best performer in FTSE100, gaining 3.82% to 2,310.000 GBp this morning.

 

US markets

Major US indices ended yesterday’s session in a downbeat mood after previously registering their best four days in a row for the last year. Looking for more directions, investors had turned their attention to the financial statements of several companies and economic news from the US and China.

The US Monthly budget statement, which is prepared by the Financial Management Service, turned out better-than-expected and showed a $10.42B deficit in January, thus surpassing analysts’ expectations for a higher figure of around $27.50B deficit.

China also had its fair share on influencing the markets yesterday as the country’s economy unexpectedly surprised with more upbeat data on its Trade balance. Both exports and imports for January grew by about 10%. Analysts anticipated that more than a week-long celebration of the Lunar year would have a negative effect on foreign trading in the first month of 2014.

Despite starting the session with gains, the Dow ended on negative territory, losing 30.83 points or 0.2% to close at 15,693.94 with 16 out of 30 companies reporting declines. The biggest fall was registered by Procter & Gamble Co, whose shares dropped by 1.7% while Caterpillar Inc was the most profitable firm as it rose by 1.3%.

The technological Nasdaq100 was the only one to rise, climbing by 15.54 points or 0.2% to end at 3,627.36.

The S&P500 dropped, albeit with a modest 0.03% or less than 1 point to close at 1,819.27. The benchmark ended its very strong 4 days when it gained 3.9% , marking its best performance since January 2013. The energy and consumer sectors were among the worst performing yesterday while the telecommunications group registered one of the largest increases.

One of today’s big events was Janet Yellen’ testimony before Congress but that was postponed due to severe weather conditions in the US. Other events which are set to capture investors’ attention include: the US Initial Jobless Claims along with the country’s Retail Sales and Business Inventories.

Source: dfmarkets.co.uk

 

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