2023-08-15 12:42:36
The Spanish Stock Market recoils positions on a day marked by low trading volume, with several markets closed for holidays in Europe such as Italy or Greece. This reduced activity, which normally brings with it greater volatility, is aggravated by new doubts about the future of the Chinese economy, key due to the impact of the Asian giant on all global demand.
The weakness that some macroeconomic references in the region have recently presented, added to new solvency problems in large real estate developers that have stopped meeting their payment obligations, have caused the country to be the focus of all alarms.
Much more after the National Statistics Office has decided to hide the unemployment data by age that was to be published this Tuesday. Criticism of the institution is being notable in a day in which, in addition, the People’s Bank of China has decided by surprise to lower interest rates (credit facility rate) by 15 points, to 2.5%, in a movement contrary to that undertaken by other central banks.
The reason? Data much worse than expected, which today has been completed with an increase in retail sales of only 2.5% in July -well below the June data- and industrial production that has also remained below of expectations. Specifically, it grew by 3.7% in July, compared to 4.4% in the previous month.
“The economic recovery in the country, fostered by the reopening after the confinements implemented to try to combat Covid-19, continues to weaken at a forced march,” indicate Link Securities analysts.
For this reason, they consider the monetary agency’s decision to be correct, to “help an economy that is facing the risk of an ever-deepening real estate crisis and increasingly weak private consumption.”
In any case, it is far from good news for the European Stock Markets, where many large stocks with high exposure to the Chinese market are listed, which may end up weighing down their expectations of results and, therefore, the behavior of their shares on the stock markets. .
Against this backdrop, the Ibex-35 lost more than 1% at mid-session and lost 9,400 points with the steepest falls for two real estate companies, Merlin and Colonial, whose shares lost 2.29% and 1.9 %, respectively. Also notable were the falls in ArcelorMittal (-1.8%), Iberdrola (-1.5%) and BBVA, which lost almost 1.5%.
London was left 1.5% at mid-session, while Paris fell 1.17% and Frankfurt lost 1.06%, while the slight rises in the Moscow Stock Exchange also stood out, after the Central Bank of the country, reunited in an extraordinary way, has decided to raise the official interest rate by 350 basic points, up to 12%, to try to contain inflationary pressures, which are affecting its currency with a sharp collapse in recent days.
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