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Global Market Wrap:
Equities Lower On Momentum Change
Equity Futures: Dow -24.00. S&P -3.00. NASDAQ -6.00. Japanese Nikkei +50.00. German Dax -11.00.
European Trade: European shares turned negative around the opening bell in Thursday trade, following risk-averse global momentum that looks have the markets at a swing change. Asian equity markets closed lower, while S&P futures also lost a few points, reaching the 1095 area ahead of the Wall Street open.
Global market momentum started heading lower during the prior U.S. session, following the FOMC monetary policy decision, which showed that the central bank is preparing to exit its quantitative easing (QE) strategies, inline with the ECB and the BoE.
Departing from QE does not mean necessarily that interest rates will go up in the short term, but it does show that the central banks are looking to reduce some of the huge liquidity currently available in the inter-banking market. This, in turn, raises uncertainty among investors, something seen in the market over the last few sessions.
In European trade, Germany’s DAX lost 0.40%, France’s CAC 40 decline 0.50%, but Switzerland’s SMI fell only 0.07%. The DJ STOXX 50 index, which tracks the biggest 50 European blue-chip companies, lost 0.40%, while the New European Blue Chip index, which tracks the largest companies from Eastern Europe, lost 0.25%.
S&P futures continued to trade on the same thin momentum as in the last few days, and shed approximately 10 points, moving down to test the 1095 intra-day swing area.
Economic Moves: The trading activity was weak, with none of the sectors in European trade moving more than 1%. As always, the largest moves came from the heavyweight banks and from the basic materials companies, which lost 0.70% throughout the session. This was reflected in the regional European indexes, were the two sectors led the pack of decliners.
Turning to individual companies, BMW jumped 1%, after it announced plans to reduce the number of working hours at its German plants. BMW was the best gainer in the German DAX index. In the U.K. FTSE, the drug-maker Shire fell 2%, after it was down-graded to “neutral”.
Upcoming Economic Moves:
07:00 EST Cad CPI Exp 0.4%, Prev -0.1%
07:00 EST Cad Core CPI Exp 0.1%, Prev 0.1%
08:30 EST Usd Unemploy Claims Exp 470K, Prev 474K
10:00 EST Usd Fed Manufact Index Exp 16.1, Prev 16.7
Crude oil was recently trading at $71.50 per barrel, lower by $0.75
Gold was recently trading lower by $10.20 to $1126.00.