Spreadex Market Update

Halloween turns scary for FTSE and Dow Jones as trade doubts spook investors



Suffering a mid-morning scare, the markets ended up sinking into the red as Thursday progressed, unaided by Donald Trump’s latest attack on the Fed’s Jerome Powell.

After a calm start, China jumped out of a bush screaming boo at the markets on Thursday morning, with Bloomberg reporting that Beijing had cast doubt on a long-term trade deal with the US despite the imminent completion of ‘phase one’ of the agreement.

The markets did bounce back from those losses somewhat, lifted by Trump claiming he and Xi Jinping will be signing ‘phase one’ soon, only for the rot to set in once again as the President started shouting on Twitter about the Fed getting everything wrong.

The Eurozone indices, which were seriously hurt by the initial reports from China, saw the best of it, the DAX and CAC settling into some very mild losses. The FTSE and Dow Jones weren’t so lucky.

The Dow found itself teetering back at the edge of 27000 as it lost 180 points, upset by an unpleasant Chicago PMI that unexpectedly fell to a terribly low 43.2 against the 48.4 forecast and the 47.1 seen last month. That comes after a similarly worrisome pair of PMIs out of China overnight.

The FTSE was under fire on all side. Its banking sector remained in disarray as Lloyds become the latest financial firm to disappoint, while its commodity stocks were shaken by the global manufacturing slowdown, trade deal doubts and falling profits at Shell.

To make matters worse, the pound continued to rise against the dollar and the euro, up 0.3% against both. That’s due to a mix of region-specific weaknesses for its rival currencies, alongside the frankly naïve idea December’s general election will yield clarity, not chaos.

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