During the past week, all of the stock markets across the board experienced stable growth. S&P, Nasdaq100 and Dow closed respectively 1.28%, 1.11% and 1.38% higher than on the previous Friday. Investors in Europe were even more bullish, with Stoxx600 and FTSE100 gaining 2.31% and 2.37% on the weekly basis. The only outlier was the AEX, which was the only index that experienced a weekly gain lower than 1% – 0.52%.
After a few turbulent weeks in the global economy, the investors seem to digest the possibility of bank failures being only a temporary crisis. This, combined with economic data published this week has sparked a relatively large risk-on in the markets.
The inflation prints from Wednesday and Thursday gave out a solid hint that the prices may start to stabilize in the US. Headline CPI and PPI both came out softer than expected which may have played a crucial role increasing the risk appetite among the market players.
An event that has certainly contributed to soothing the nerves about the banking crisis was JP Morgan’s quarterly earnings report, beating all of the expectations and showing an increase of 25% and 22% in revenue and EPS respectively. Yet, the real question is if the bank is an outlier when it comes to its sound financial position, and whether the strong data may be a representative picture of a broader basket of large U.S. Banks.
An unexpected statement came on Friday from the Wagner Group’s Chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as he called for declaring the end of the war in Ukraine, on the basis of achieving the objectives by the Russian Federation. We are yet to see if the call will meet with any response from Russian officials, but it is rather safe to assume that any sort of de-escalation would be a positive driver for financial markets.
Flow Traders Investment Competition Update
Yesterday it was time for the annual NN Rotterdam Marathon again. Congratulations to all members who took part in the marathon and got to collect their medal yesterday! The top five is still going steady, with only Zilvervloot entering the top five this week. At the top of the competition we can still find B.R.O.O.D. Beleggers with a M2 of 16.56%. On the second place Negotium Novum is getting closer with a M2 of 15.93%. Rising 13 places in the competition and finally making their way out of the bottom five of the competition we have Plutus Investments. Hopefully for them they can make a nice final sprint in the competition. Then we have Victoria, losing nine places this week and dropping out of the top five of the competition. Finally we have an investment group for who the last kilometers are proving to be just too much, Batavia Vrouwen, who are now taking in the last place of the ranking.
