Investors’ reactions to HSBC’s full year results only intensified as the day went on, Britain’s biggest bank seeing its losses expand to 6.6% following news of a 62% slide in annual profit. That leaves the company at its worst price since January 6th, effectively wiping out the decent amount of growth the bank had managed to post since 2017 began. The update also impacted HSBC’s UK peers, though RBS – which is expected to reveal its umpteenth yearly loss on Friday – fared worse than Lloyds and Barclays, both of whom are set to see sharp jumps in profit on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. All this helped drag on the FTSE, the UK index dipping by 10 points to remain the wrong side of 7300.
Over in the Eurozone a muscular pair of flash manufacturing and services PMIs Germany helped lift the DAX by nearly half a percent. As for the CAC, despite a huge leap in its services reading, a disappointing manufacturing figure, and fears surrounding the presidential momentum gained by Marine Le Pen, have kept the French index flat around 4870.
Looking ahead to the US open and, after yesterday’s (ironic) President’s Day break, the Dow Jones is set to build on last week’s record-breaking close, the futures suggesting the index will cross 20650 after the bell. Like the Eurozone, the main focus in the US will be on this afternoon’s flash manufacturing and services PMIs, the first to cover fully-Trumped period of time; the former is forecast to slip to 55.0 to 54.7 month-on-month, while the latter is expected to increase slightly to 55.8 from 55.6.
