PARIS/LONDON/ZURICH (dpa-AFX) – The most important European stock exchanges appeared quite unimpressed on Monday by the latest developments in the Iran war. Despite the escalation caused by the entry of the Iran-allied Houthi militia, the EuroStoxx 50 temporarily turned positive after a cautious start to trading.
The leading index was quoted around midday Eurozone 0.11 percent lower at 5,500 points. The Swiss SMI showed a similar pattern, recently claiming an increase of 0.05 percent to 12,576 points. The British FTSE 100 rose by 0.48 percent to 10,015 points. He benefited from his heavily weighted oil and raw materials stocks.
Moderate gains are also emerging in the USA after the indices there ended their fifth week of losses in a row on Friday with clear price drops. On the Asian trading centers, however, things went downhill sharply on Monday.
“Although the stock market has already priced in a large part of the negative impulses, negative news is still flowing in,” commented Andreas Lipkow, chief market analyst at CMC Markets. “It is difficult to estimate how quickly rising energy prices will be reflected in inflation rates and how expensive oil can become.” German consumer prices for March could provide the first data on this in the early afternoon. On Tuesday, consumer prices for the entire euro zone will be on the agenda.
In the market-wide Stoxx Europe 600, utilities stocks and shares of oil and gas companies were among the biggest winners. They benefited from the continued rise in oil prices. Commodity stocks were also in demand.
For the oil company TotalEnergies, a report in the Financial Times about a record profit from an oil bet provided additional impetus: the shares gained 1.9 percent and thus continued their record hunt. According to the newspaper, the company dominated the physical oil market in the Middle East in March. It made a profit of over $1 billion after buying up all of the United Arab Emirates and Oman’s crude oil cargoes scheduled for loading in May.
On Monday, however, investors avoided stocks from the travel industry and the banking sector. According to the Bloomberg news agency, the latter are about to end their record winning streak of 13 quarters in a row./gl/nas
