Member Article

Shares continue rebound in to the weekend ? Latest Market Analysis

As expected, last night saw the EU’s financial markets regulator ESMA announced that France, Italy, Spain and Belgium banned all forms of short selling in banking and financial stocks, in an attempt to counter the extreme volatility in stock specific trading. Other news affecting the European open was second quarter French GDP data which, at zero percent, showed growth had ground to a halt in Europe’s second biggest nation. The markets took comfort from the European policy, shrugging off the French growth news to quickly gain more than 1%. The ascent was unsurprisingly led by banking stocks, Barclays putting on more than 8% at one point.

Markets were given a further boost as UK GDP was revised upwards in the second quarter from 0.2% to 0.3%. The afternoon was dominated by inflows into equity markets, the FTSE 100 making a brief excursion above the 5300. These heights were however short lived, as news from the US showed confidence amongst consumers fell in August to its lowest level since 1980. The reading fell from 63.7 in July to 54.9, with many forecasting a figure around 62. The news was tempered somewhat by a separate report suggesting that US retail sales increased 0.5% in the same month.

The FTSE lost more than 50 points (around 1%), but reassuringly stabilised in response to the mixed data and re-gathered momentum as the afternoon drew to a close. As the trading week ended, the FTSE 100 closed 3% higher with a 157 point gain at 5320, Gold Miner Randgold Resources the only stock to decline on the day, but was just 15p lower at 6170p.

Elsewhere Gold fell to $1734, having surpassed $1800 dollars earlier in the week and Brent Crude Oil rose, 1.6% higher at $108, confirming the positive sentiment of the day.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by John Dance .