Consolidation Continues In The Markets

Since the beginning of the week, at the key European and American exchanges, there has not been anything interesting happening. Yesterday, stock indices were moving in different directions, but in general they are consolidating next to the maximum levels of the last year. Optimistic forecasts regarding improvement of the economy of the developed countries this year, haven't given investors a reason to transfer to safer instruments, like gold or treasury bonds. The attention of the market is directed towards the upcoming meeting of the FED, which is going to be next week.

Yesterday’s trading session in Europe came to an end with multidirectional movement of indices. The interest of investors was down to statistics on the labor market of Great Britain, the indicator made 7.1% instead of the expected 7.3%, however this data was not supporting indices for a long time. By closing, the English FTSE100 index decreased by 0.12%, the French CAC40 grew by 0.03%, and the German DAX decreased by 0.1%.

In the USA, indices also couldn't show uniform dynamics, buyers nevertheless prevailed. Dow Jones decreased by 0.25% to the level of 16373.34 points, S&P 500 grew by 0.06% reaching the level of 1844.86 points, and Nasdaq Composite grew by 0.41% to the level of 4243.00 points.

Data published this morning from China brought disappointment to the markets. The PMI index for the production sphere, counted by HSBC bank in January, fell to a level of 49.6 points, which is significantly weaker than the forecast of 50.3 points. Business activity in the country showed the first decrease for the last 6 months. Naturally, on Thursday morning, the markets reacted to this news negatively, and pushed Asian stock indices to go down, with Nikkei loosing 0.65%, ASX falling by 1.1% and CSI decreasing by 0.6%.

Prices of oil managed to restore some loses and are showing positive dynamics. The international Power Agency raised the forecast of world consumption of oil to 1.3 million barrels per day. This morning, Brent is traded on a level of 108.25$ per barrel, WTI is up by 0.10% on the level of 96.83$ per barrel.

Today, investors attention will be on statistics from Europe, where the data on the index of business activity in the industry and the services sector of Great Britain and the Eurozone, is going to be published. In the USA, payrolls for the last week, and data on oil stocks will be presented later on throughout the day.