Malaise at Shell continues; KPN gives AEX support | Financial

Just before eleven o’clock the AEX index stood at 549.46 points, a minus of 0.2%. The Midcap index still whipped away the loss entirely and gained 0.1% at 813.58 points.

Elsewhere in Europe, the stock markets were also less red. Frankfurt and Paris both dropped 0.4%.

Futures now pointed to declines in prices at the start of trading on Wall Street on Friday to 1%. This afternoon, all eyes will be on US labor market figures. It is expected that 900,000 jobs were added in the last month. Unemployment in the US is likely to have fallen slightly to 8.2%.

The main stock market indicators were also under pressure in Asia and Australia. The Australian All Ordinaries fell 1.3 percent and the Nikkei in Tokyo, which could not be traded for a day due to an outage, lost 0.7 percent.

Trump himself announced on Twitter that he and Melania were infected with corona, after it had previously been revealed that an important adviser of his had contracted the virus. The president and his wife are now in quarantine. Trump, 74, is now one of the more than 7.2 million Americans who have become infected with the corona virus. More than 200,000 people in the United States have now died of the lung virus.

Analysts say Trump’s contamination underscores that coronavirus risks are far from gone and that the US election campaign could be disrupted. “The financial markets hate uncertainty and this is what causes it. Not only because of the president, but also because this could mean that the virus is now spreading to the higher echelons of the US government, ”an analyst told Bloomberg news agency.

Given the low trading volumes, according to Daam-Martijn van Holst, trader at ABN Amro, the news about Trump’s corona contamination has hardly any impact on the mood among investors for the time being. He points out that there are also no signs that Trump cannot fulfill his duties in the White House because of the positive test. “Investors are particularly looking forward to the start of the new earnings season and are not too concerned with the US presidential elections yet. There are more concerns about how things will go after the elections as many more Americans may vote by mail. ”

Corné van Zeijl, an analyst at Actiam, takes into account that Trump could even benefit from his corona contamination in the upcoming presidential elections in early November in a scenario that he gets through the period of quarantine well despite his advanced age.

The dollar appreciated against the euro and the British pound. Investors are looking for safe havens, including the US currency, in the event of turmoil in the financial markets.

Philips in minor

In the AEX was mainly Philips under pressure. The medical technology group declined 1.9% for no apparent reason.

RD Shell continued Thursday’s downturn with a loss of 0.8% to close to USD 10, the same level as after the price drop just after the March corona crisis. The price of crude oil (Brent) dipped below $ 40 a barrel this morning. Van Zeijl emphasizes that Shell is a stock market drama for investors this year with about 60% off the price since the top at the beginning of this year.

ASMI that was on the rise a day earlier due to a boost in the chip sector, fell 0.7%.

The more defensive KPN fund led the list of winners. The telecom concern rose 2.5%.

Banks found their way up. ING in ABN thicknesses 0.5% and 0.1% respectively. Insurers were at the forefront. Aegon became worth 0.7% more.

In the Midkap index Air France KLM 0.4% higher. The unions and KLM concluded a deal on a wage sacrifice at the last minute on Thursday evening.

Pharming was hit hard, with a loss of 2.3%. Flow Traders profits from the rumble on the stock market and went up 2%.

Support package

Attention will also continue to be paid to the troubles in Washington surrounding the new support package for the US economy. The US House of Representatives on Thursday (local time) approved a new support package for the economy worth $ 2.2 trillion ($ 2,200 billion).

However, it doesn’t appear that the law governing the package will make it in the Senate, where Republicans have a majority. In addition, we are looking forward to the important US jobs report, which will be released later today.

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