This week wasn’t bright for the markets. Starting with America: Dow decreased by 1.02%, S&P500 fell by 1.05%, NASDAQ decreased by 1.69% on the other hand of the picture, it wasn’t different for European Markets, STOXX Europe 50 fell by STOXX Europe 600 by 1.04% and FTSE decreased by 0.37%. 

There were many events this week. After 2 big earthquakes hit Turkey on the 6th of February, Turkish people and the whole world's hearts are filled with deep sorrow and with big grief. Just in 20 days, we have lost 45 thousand of our lives. Since the 6th of February, the earthquakes are continuing with a high magnitude. All our prayers, help, minds, and hearts are with the Turkish people. We are all trying to heal the wounds of this disaster.

Different parts of the world also had different agendas. In Nigeria, last Saturday there was a presidential election, and Bola Tinubu  won #NigeriaDecides2023. It took a while to announce the official results because there were delays in some ares of the country because of the attacks to polling stations. 

Returning to Europe this week, while Biden was predicted to go to Poland, he went to Kyiv "unplanned" and made statements regarding the 1st year of the Russia-Ukraine war. Over this 1-year period, we have seen record prices of gas all around the world. Especially in this time period, Europe faced a cold winter and now European governments are taking LNG infrastructure investment decisions in order to be independent in this uneven gas industry.

In addition, layoffs have spread to consultancy companies as well, and a large number of layoffs have begun. It is assumed that these layoffs will, unfortunately, be higher than the ones in the Covid-19 era.

Flow Traders Investment Competition Update 

Vico Investments is the new leader in the Investment Competition with a M2 of 9.37%, passing B.R.O.O.D. Beleggers who were not able to keep the top position for long. On the other side of the competition, we have an investment group that is able to hold their place for a long time, namely Plutus Investments, who are still at the bottom. With their name we would expect an abundance of wealth, but this way they are nowhere near a positive return or the top of the competition, and the connection to the rest of the competition is getting lost as well. To take it from the Greeks to the Romans we have Merx, who managed to rise 11 places to the 8th place in the competition, showing the best trading skills of this week.