There was little change as Monday went on, the European indices still struggling under the threat of an escalation in tensions between the US and China, but with the FTSE remaining as an outlier.
While its peers suffered heavy losses – the DAX was down 3.4%, with the CAC down 3.9% – the FTSE managed to keep its own decline at a negligible 0.25%. A 1.8% rise from Royal Dutch Shell (LON:RDSa) certainly helped, as did cable’s 0.4% fall. There was further support from Big Pharma, as AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline rose around 2.5% apiece, while Ocado (LON:OCDO) continued to benefit from its stay at a home demand with a 4% increase.
The UK index may find its steady performance challenged, however, when the Dow Jones et al get involved. The Dow is facing a 250 point fall once trading gets underway stateside, a drop that would push the index back below 23500, around 1400 points off of the intraday highs struck on the final day of April.
Investors are expressing their deep unease about the way Donald Trump and his most loyal colleagues are conducting themselves, stoking the fires of anti-China sentiment with threats of tariffs and conspiracies surrounding the origins of the coronavirus outbreak. Not only is this a worry now, if this is the tack used for the entirety of Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, then US-China relations could completely disintegrate come November.
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