WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE MARKETS?
Financials Suffer
Today European markets opened lower, with financial stocks including Deutschebank, Societe Generale, Commerzbank and BNP Paribas all falling in early trading. On Wall Street the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq rose on hopes lower corporate tax rates would let companies deploy more capital on dividends for investors, new projects and wages.
In Asia the NIFTY50, Shanghai SSE Composite, FTSE Hong Kong and TOPIX all enjoyed gains - the NIFTY in particular has had a great week so far. It topped out at 10,484.85 yesterday, keeping it on track to hit the 10,500 points mark, which will be its highest ever.
Trading volumes will be getting thinner and thinner as we head into the Christmas break, but for now American indices are trading near record levels. Financial shares in the US (unlike in Europe) are winners today, with Goldman Sachs rising 2.40% and Bank of America up 1.27%. Apple shares rose 0.75% while Biogen and Paychex Inc fell by 2.73% and 2.37% respectively.
Commodity Stocks Boosted while Oil Falls
Mining stocks advanced higher on the FTSE100 throughout Thursday. Rio Tinto, Glencore and BHP Billiton all saw gains.
The price of Brent Crude oil fell after the operator of Britain's Forties pipeline in the North Sea announced it was expected to restart as soon as January thanks to repairs coming over Christmas. Brent Crude stayed steady at around $64.73 a barrel throughout the day, just shy of highs of over $65 this month (the highest all year).
Oil prices had been supported above the $65 level by the closure of the pipeline as well as falling crude inventories in the US, but capped by output that is fast approaching 10 million barrels a day, a level similar to Saudi Arabia and Russia, who both agreed to further output cuts for 2018.