With little on the economic agenda this Monday investors looked to the rest of the week for guidance this morning.
Chief of these more macro concerns was OPEC’s meeting on Wednesday, the prospect of which has caused another near 1% slide from Brent Crude. That is because hopes for an output deal have once again sunk after Saudi Arabia pulled out of a meeting with non-OPEC members, with the country also suggesting that since it expects ‘demand to recover in 2017’ a cut may not be needed. Of course this was bad news for the FTSE; the UK index dropped 50 points, falling back under 6800 in the process, as the likes of Shell and BP shed 1.5% apiece.
Elsewhere, it appears that the euro’s continued rebound has put the Eurozone indices in a bad mood, with the DAX and CAC falling 0.8% and 0.7% respectively. What is interesting about the euro’s rise – it has taken 0.8% off the dollar, helping put some more distance between it and parity, and half a percent off the pound – is that it comes a week before the Italian constitutional reforms referendum.
Current polls (and, yes, such methodology now has more question marks surrounding it than The Riddler) have the ‘No’ vote winning, something that may trigger the resignation of Mario Renzi and a fresh batch of political instability in Europe. Yet for now the euro doesn’t seem too bothered, continuing to climb away from last week’s lows.
