MILANO – 4:50 pm. The European and American lists are moving upwards, after the weakness of the eve of which closed in the sign of uncertainty one of the best semesters ever seen on the US stock exchanges since 1998. Great attention, on the part of market operators, in view of the US data on weekend work. While waiting for the report on the work, it should be noted that the requests for new weekly unemployment benefits in the United States they fell by 51,000 units to 364,000. This is the lowest figure since March 2020, i.e. since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The decline is higher than the expectations of the annalists who expected 390,000 new questions, compared to the 415,000 registered the previous week.
Towards the final part of the session, Milano salt by 0.69%. On Piazza Affari, Stmicroelectronics launches a buy back program of up to $ 1.04 billion over three years, subject to shareholder approval and other approvals from time to time. Credem successfully closed the placement of a 750 million euro covered bond with orders from more than 50 investors for over 1.6 billion euro. London advances by 1.12%, the others slow down a little: Frankfurt salt of 0.34%, Paris adds 0.75%. TO Wall Street, the Dow Jones adds 0.25%, in line with the S & P500, while the Nasdaq is fractionally higher. In Asia, the session was weak with concerns related to the new spread of the Coronavirus which dominated it. Tokyo lost 0.4% continuing a streak of three sessions in decline.
The day was full of macroeconomic surveys. We start from China, where manufacturing activity shows signs of slowing down: in June the SME index rose to 51.3 points from the previous 52. It remains above the expansion threshold (50 points) but is below expectations. In Europe, theItalian manufacturing SME index it was close to record levels also in June with 62.2 points, from the previous 62.3. In Spain there was a rise to 60.4 in June, a top for 23 years. And France also remains very strong with 59 points from 59.4 in May. Germany was even above expectations, with the indicator jumped to 65.1 points. Record also for the data relating to the Eurozone, which grew for the fourth consecutive month and rose to 63.4, up from 63.1 in May. In the US, on the other hand, the manufacturing ISM fell to 60.6 points in June, below estimates. In Japan, the confidence of manufacturing companies has reached record levels for two and a half years. Again in Europe, Germany reported a 4.2% jump in May retail sales, above expectations.
The president of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, presented to the European Parliament stressing that “in the current phase of the pandemic, our concerns about financial stability are shifting from liquidity risks in the non-financial corporate sector to their budgetary vulnerabilities”. For Lagarde “it is important to avoid that the combination of high debt and weaker profits, especially in the sectors hardest hit by the crisis, leads to insolvencies of profitable companies in the medium term”, because “this could increase the social and economic cost of this crisis. “and” increase the riskiness in banks’ portfolios “. Regarding the distribution of dividends, Lagarde recalled that the Systemic Risk Board “reiterated that if the economic and financial conditions do not seriously deteriorate our recommendations on the restriction of” dividend distributions to activated banks “during the Covid-19 pandemic could come to maturity at the end of September 2021 “.
Among the currencies, the dollar stabilizes after recent gains. The euro is confirmed below 1.19 dollars: the European currency changes hands at 1.1840 dollars and 131.55 yen. Dollar / yen rises to 111.12. After two and a half months of decline, Covid contamination is on the rise in Europe, mainly due to the Delta variant in the UK and Russia, where it is causing new outbreaks. The greenback closed the month of June with a sharp rise against the euro (+ 2.8%) and against a basket of the main currencies (+ 2.6%). US data on the job market on Friday is expected. The spread between ten-year BTPs and German Bund counterparts, it opens at 102 points, in line with yesterday’s closing. The yield on Italian bonds rose slightly to 0.827%.
Attention, among commodities, to the prices of Petroleum that come from peaks close to 3 years after the + 9% recorded in June, driven by increased demand for fuel, as countries recovered from the coronavirus pandemic. Investors are particularly focused on today’s OPEC + meeting which is to decide production levels starting in August and the group is expected to increase supply for August by around 550,000 barrels per day. Meanwhile, both EIA and API data showed that U.S. crude oil inventories fell more than expected last week. However, a surge in Covid-19 cases in Asia and the rapid spread of the Delta variant in some European countries could limit the upward momentum. In New York, prices rise 2.87% to $ 75.58 a barrel.
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