Sour taste tech and Shell; KPN has a nice bite | Financial

At around 12.30 pm the AEX index stood at 547.4 points, a minus of 0.5%. The Midcap index squeezed out the loss entirely, gaining 0.1% on 813.2 points.

Elsewhere in Europe, the stock markets were redder than in Amsterdam. Frankfurt and Paris both dropped 1%.

Futures now pointed to declines in prices at the start of trading on Wall Street on Friday to 2%. This afternoon, all eyes will be on US labor market figures. It is expected that 900,000 jobs were added in the last month. Unemployment in the US is likely to have fallen slightly to 8.2%.

The main stock market indicators were also under pressure in Asia and Australia. The Australian All Ordinaries fell 1.3 percent and the Nikkei in Tokyo, which could not be traded for a day due to an outage, lost 0.7 percent.

Trump himself announced on Twitter that he and Melania were infected with corona, after it had previously been revealed that an important adviser of his had contracted the virus. The president and his wife are now in quarantine. Trump, 74, is now one of the more than 7.2 million Americans who have become infected with the corona virus. More than 200,000 people in the United States have now died of the lung virus.

Analysts say Trump’s contamination underscores that coronavirus risks are far from gone and that the US election campaign could be disrupted. “The financial markets hate uncertainty and this is what causes it. Not only because of the president, but also because this could mean that the virus is now spreading to the higher echelons of the US government, ”an analyst told Bloomberg news agency.

Low trading volumes

Given the low trading volumes, according to Daam-Martijn van Holst, trader at ABN Amro, the news about Trump’s corona contamination has hardly any impact on the mood among investors for the time being. He points out that there are also no signs that Trump cannot fulfill his duties in the White House because of the positive test. “Investors are particularly looking forward to the start of the new earnings season and are not too concerned with the US presidential elections yet. There are more concerns about how things will go after the elections as many more Americans may vote by mail. ”

Corné van Zeijl, an analyst at Actiam, takes into account that Trump could even benefit from his corona contamination in the upcoming presidential elections in early November in a scenario that he gets through the period of quarantine well despite his advanced age.

The dollar appreciated against the euro and the British pound. Investors are looking for safe havens, including the US currency, in the event of turmoil in the financial markets.

Philips in minor

In the AEX was mainly Philips under pressure. The medical technology group with significant exposure to the US market declined 2%.

ASMI that was on the rise a day earlier due to a boost in the chip sector, fell further with a decline of 1.8%. ASML also ended up with the bigger declineers and lost 1%.

RD Shell Thursday’s decline continued with a loss of 1.3% to close to € 10, just below the level of the price drop just after the outbreak of the corona crisis in March. The price of crude oil (Brent) dipped back below $ 40 a barrel amid ongoing fears of much weaker demand for oil as a result of the second corona wave. Van Zeijl emphasizes that Shell is a stock market drama for investors this year with about 60% off the price since the top at the beginning of this year.

The more defensive fund KPN led the list of winners. The telecom concern rose 2.5%.

Banks also kept their feet dry due to investors’ less willingness to risk. ING in ABN thicknesses 0.9% and 0.3%, respectively. Insurers were also at the forefront. Aegon became worth 0.7% more.

In the Midkap index Air France KLM Lowered by 1% despite the fact that the unions and KLM reached a deal on a wage sacrifice last Thursday evening.

Besi was also hit, with a loss of 2.2%.

On the other hand, Eurocommercial Properties (+ 5%) performed well in the market after the sale of a Swedish shopping center.

Support package

Furthermore, attention will continue to be paid to the troubles in Washington surrounding the new support package for the US economy. The US House of Representatives on Thursday (local time) approved a new support package for the economy worth $ 2.2 trillion ($ 2,200 billion).

However, it doesn’t appear that the law governing the package will make it in the Senate, where Republicans have a majority. In addition, we are looking forward to the important US jobs report, which will be released later today.

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