© Reuters. EUROPEAN STOCK MARKETS RISE IN MID-SESSION
by Blandine Henault
PARIS (Reuters) – with the exception of London, europe’s main stock Exchanges are evolving down Thursday mid-session, affected by the dip in the sector of basic resources that suffer from the decline in commodity prices in a context of fears for the chinese economy.
In Paris, the CAC 40 declined 0.51% to 5.419,92 points, at 10.30 am GMT. In Frankfurt, the Dax gives up 0.44 per cent while in London, the FTSE (+0,12%) took advantage of the continuing weakness of the pound sterling.
Index pan-european FTSEurofirst 300 declined 0.11%, the EuroStoxx 50 for the euro area is losing 0.31 per cent and the Stoxx 600 folds down to 0.15%.
Has Wall Street, futures on indices new york report a opening down 0.2% to 0.4%, after a constructive training session the day before which allowed the S&P 500 to reach its highest level in five months.
But this momentum has not spread Thursday in Asia, where the places the chinese have been overtaken by concerns about trade tensions between Beijing and Washington and their potential impact on the economy of China.
The Shanghai stock Exchange has yielded 0.51 per cent, in the wake of the decline of the yuan, which fell to a lowest in a year against the dollar on the market both onshore as offshore.
These fears on the economic growth in China will weigh on commodity prices, the country being the world’s leading consumer of most industrial metals.
The price of copper falls by 2.5%, zinc, 3.48%, and the nickel of 2.28%.
In Trading, this translates to a decrease of 1.33% for the Stoxx basic resources, with the largest decrease sector in Europe.
ILIAD LAUGHS, PUBLICIS CRY
The Stoxx media (-1,16%) suffers for its share of the dip of Publicis (PA:PUBP) (-8,92%) after the announcement of a retreat surprise of the group’s income advertising in the second quarter.
This counter-performance is made after the publication Tuesday of quarterly results lower than the expectations of the american Omnicom. In the aftermath, the british WPP, which will publish its half-year results on 4 September, a fall of 4.25%.
Conversely, Iliad (PA:ILD) leaps of 7,74%, with investors welcoming the successful start-up of the activities in Italy of the parent company of Free. Iliad has announced on Wednesday that it had crossed the bar of one million subscribers in Italy and have decided to extend its commercial offer at € 5.99 per month to 200,000 in the next subscribers.
On the foreign exchange market, the dollar continues to strengthen and gains of 0.34% against a basket of currencies of reference. Despite trade tensions, investors remain relatively confident about the state of health of the u.s. economy after the optimism displayed by the president of the federal Reserve, and Jerome Powell.
The euro falls to its levels at the beginning of July, just above the threshold of 1.16 us dollar.
On the oil market, crude prices lost more than 1%, penalized by the announcement of a rise in inventories and an increase of the production in the United States.
(Edited by Patrick Vignal)
