MILANO – The summit hypothesis Biden-Putin on the Ukrainian question he gives only fleeting confidence to investors: uncertainty on the Ukrainian front returns to take over as soon as the Kremlin says it considers “” premature “to talk about a summit on Ukraine between the two leaders and even more so when the same Putin announces “the decision on the recognition of the self-proclaimed republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine, shortly.
And so – on a day without Wall Street (celebrates President day) – EU lists close at the lowest: Frankfurtthe worst, lost 2.09%, Paris 2.04% e Milano l’1,72%. London on the other hand, it limited the decline to 0.42%. On Piazza Affari slips Exor after the agreement with the tax authorities. The stock market collapses fly at its lowest since March 2020. Investors fear the impact of sanctions on Russia’s fragile economy. The Moex drops 10.50% to 3,036 points while the RTS index falls by 13.21% to 1,207 points, a record drop since March 2020, the beginning of the outbreak of the pandemic.
However, it remains an extremely tense and volatile phase and this is evidenced by the weak closing of Tokyo which this morning lost 0.78%, to 26,910.87, with a loss of over 200 points. On the foreign exchange market, the yen changed little at 114.90 against the dollar, and at 130.60 against the euro.
Geopolitical tensions spill over to fixed income with the sovereign card of peripheral districts. This is the case of BTPs which, in the wake of a current of sales, record a drop in prices and an increase in yields with the result that I spread it with i Bund it widens to 172 basis points against 166 basis points this morning after the first trading, a final in sharp increase, therefore, compared to the closing on Friday (164 basis points). The yield of the BTP is also under tension, which stands at 1.92% (1.85% on Friday in the final).
L’euro closed higher but below the session highs: the single currency gradually lost ground with the intensification of tensions in the Donbas and ended the day in the 1.1335 dollar zone. Finally, the price of the Petroleum the April WTI future rose 1.3% to 91.4 dollars a barrel, while the similar delivery on Brent traded at 95.2 dollars (+1.7 percent).
Mention instead for the price of nickel which reached $ 25,055 per ton, the highest since 2011, driven by the escalation of the crisis in Ukraine, which could put Russian production under pressure, and by the increase in demand, linked to the boom in electric cars (the metal is used in batteries). According to observers, considering that Russia is one of the largest nickel producers, along with Indonesia, exports could slow down, especially if sanctions were imposed on Moscow.
Among the macro data of the day it should be noted that i producer prices in Germany in January they recorded a growth of 2.2%, against the peak of + 5% recorded last December. The consensus, however, was + 1.5%. The Federal Statistical Office notes that with this month’s increase, the producer price index for industrial products increased by 25.0% compared to January 2021. This is the highest increase ever recorded compared to the corresponding month. of the previous year. From reading the ‘flash’ estimate, the main Composite SME Index calculated by Ihs Markit, it rose by 3.5 points in February (the largest increase since March last year), from 52.3 in January to 55.8, signaling a strong acceleration in economic growth. Germany resumes its role as a locomotive: the German economy grew in February “at the fastest pace in the last six months”, the economists said “amid signs of improving demand and despite a new wave of infections linked to the Omicron variant” . The flash index of the compound PMI on manufacturing rose to 56.2, from 53.8 in January, exhibiting “the strongest growth in the private sector in six months,” the note from IHS Markit said. The SME services index rose from 52.2 to 56.6, above the level of 53.1 expected by the consensus, while the manufacturing index fell from 59.8 to 58.5, disappointing economists’ expectations. who expect a stable figure at 59.8.
From the OECD comes the data on the acceleration of GDP in the fourth quarter of 2021 in the OECD area, but the growth of the Eurozone, including Italy, is slowing down (passing from 2.6% to 0.6%). As for 2021 as a whole, the GDP of the world’s major economies grew by 5.5%, after a drop of 4.6% in the previous year, heavily affected by the pandemic.
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