From the wreckage of Wednesday’s trading emerged a tentative rebound on Thursday, like green shoots appearing from the rubble.
You’d be hard-pushed to find a credible justification for the session’s early gains, beyond them being a fairly predictable reaction to the severity of yesterday’s losses, the vultures swooping in looking for value.
The FTSE ostensibly benefited from Royal Dutch Shell (LON:RDSa) announcing a 4% increase to its Q3 dividend after a far better than forecast set of quarterly numbers, including adjusted earnings of $955 million against the $594 million expected.
With the oil giant up 3%, this allowed the UK index to crawl half a percent higher after the bell, leaving it mewling outside the door of 5900 like a sickly kitten seeking shelter.
The DAX saw similar growth, rising 0.8%, as it barely recovered the topsoil of Wednesday’s craterous decline. The German bourse is now trading just above 11,600 – 1000 points lower than where it started the week.
The CAC, meanwhile, was up 0.6%, crossing 4580 despite Emmanuel Macron imposing a 4-week national lockdown on France.
Shedding an upsetting 940 points on Wednesday night, the Dow Jones is hoping for a 160 point increase when trading gets underway stateside, pushing it back above 26,700.
It remains to be seen if, now that Germany and France have re-imposed national lockdowns, the markets most recent bout of covid-19 panic will be set aside in favour of focusing on Tuesday’s presidential election. Or whether a virus hotspot like the UK still has the capacity to cause widespread alarm, especially amidst the growing calls for a nationwide ‘circuit breaker’.
It will also be interesting to see how much of an impact this afternoon’s third quarter GDP data out of the US has on sentiment. Analysts are forecasting growth of 32% at the annualised rate, a huge swing from the 31.4% contraction suffered in Q2.
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