Stock market volatility remains high. One day it’s rough and angry and the next the trees seem to grow into the sky. Today seemed to be such a day, although the AEX (+0.7%) is already largely relinquishing the profit from around lunchtime.
The biggest winner is PostNL (+9.0%). A PostNL spokesperson confirmed to ABM Financial News on Friday that VESA, the investment vehicle of Czech multi-billionaire Kretinsky, has informed the postal company of a merger notification regarding de facto control of PostNL. However, ING analysts think this price movement is exaggerated.
Unibail Rodamco With a profit of 3.2%, it is not bad either, although the retail property fund lost more than 11% of its stock market value yesterday. What strikes me most is that growth stocks have been significantly better than value stocks in recent days. Still, it’s much too early to say that a turnaround is underway.
It has happened often enough this year that technology stocks appeared to recover, but eventually collapsed. Ultimately, inflation must level off before sentiment among growth stocks picks up sharply. It also helps if a soft landing of the global economy takes place.
The problem is, we can’t know this for the short term. What we do know, however, is that equities are by far the best asset class. The S&P500 has risen by 1,600% over the past thirty years and the AEX is also doing well with a plus of 1.100%. Only the Germans can’t keep up with the pace.
Applied Materials
Chip machine manufacturer Applied Materials (-6.3%) falls short of its own expectations and the outlook for the current quarter is not encouraging either. The company blames this entirely on shortages of key parts and the lockdown in Shanghai.
Sales were stable compared to a quarter ago and profitability was slightly lower. The figures are reason for the IEX Investor Desk to adjust the valuations downwards. Nevertheless, there are certainly opportunities. You can read exactly how this works in the article below.
Shortage of parts really hurts Applied Materials now #AppliedMaterials https://t.co/FJ1rhGScL2
– IEX Investor Desk (@Investor Desk) May 20, 2022
AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca (+1.0%), like many other pharmaceutical companies, outperforms the market this year. The company achieves strong cash flows and high margins, making it relatively immune to high inflation. The popularity of this value share among investors has therefore increased sharply.
While the British stock market is 1% lower this year – which is significantly better than the AEX (-14%) – AstraZeneca puts a plus of more than 20% on the board. Unlike most peers, AstraZeneca will not suffer from expiring patents in the short to medium term, justifying a higher market valuation.
The pharmaceutical is currently trading at 19 times its expected profit for 2022, making it the highest-rated pharmaceutical in the IEX Investor Desk universe. Whether it is wise to sell the pieces after the recent price increase, you can read in the article below.
AstraZeneca shows the market its heels #AstraZenecaPLC https://t.co/nWzuUGRIRA
– IEX Investor Desk (@Investor Desk) May 20, 2022
Annuities
The Dutch ten-year interest rate has remained stable at 1.24% compared to a week ago. The US yield on ten-year Treasuries, on the other hand, has fallen below 3%.
- Netherlands: +2 basis points (+1.24%)
- Germany: +2 basis points (+0.96%)
- Italy: +10 basis points (+2.99%)
- United Kingdom: +5 basis points (+1.92%)
- United States: -2 basis points (+2.84%)
The weekly lists
- AEX this week: -1.6%
- AEX this month: -4.0%
- AEX this year: -14.4%
- AEX reinvestment index this year: -13.6%
Divided image
Thanks to this good final day, the AEX (-1.6%) the damage is still somewhat limited. Yet in Amsterdam we perform significantly worse than the other European indices. For example, the DAX ended the week with a loss of just 0.9%. It is mainly Wall Street that is losing ground. The Nasdaq100 loses about 6%.
AEX
It is the value stocks that take the biggest blows this week. In particular, the companies most affected by high inflation are at the bottom of the list. Examples are Heineken (-5,5%), Unilever (-5.7%) in Ahold (-7.1%). The latter is being sold as a result of the poor quarterly figures of the American supermarket chains Walmart and Target.
AMX
Growth stocks, on the other hand, are doing well and there are plenty of them within the AMX. Inpost (+12.7%) is the most volatile fund within the midcap, so it is not surprising that the manager of safe deposit boxes is the big winner. Air France-KLM (+10.5%) is also doing well, but we understand that a little less. A large-scale emission seems only a matter of time. ABN Amro (-11.1%) on the other hand, is being penalized for its first quarter figures, although they weren’t that bad after all.
ASCX
fastned (+10.5%) stands out positively. The road to profitability is still a long one, but we nevertheless revised the stock’s advice upwards. The reason why you read in this article. Ebusco (+8.5%) isn’t doing it wrong either. B&S Group (-18.0%) has to do with considerable margin pressure. The IEX Investors’ Desk expects earnings per share of €0.46. At the time of the IPO in 2018, this was still €0.72.
Finally, I wish you a nice weekend. This week Arend Jan writes the preview.
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