MILAN (Reuters) – It’s been a thrilling start to the week for stock markets and even Milan is not exempt from the wave of sales hitting stock exchanges.
The declines were driven by a 13% fall in the Tokyo index this morning, the worst decline since Black Monday in 1987, caused by losses in global stock markets last week, fears for the performance of the economy in the United States and the concern that investments financed by the weak yen are drying up.
Geopolitical issues also drove gains with fears of an imminent Iranian attack on Israel after the assassination of the head of Hamas in Iran last week.
A trader points out that geopolitical issues combined with fears related to the performance of economies are driving towards a strong wave of selling in global stock markets. Following the declines of the last four sessions, the Milan stock exchange almost completely burned all the gains accumulated since the beginning of the year, maintaining a positive balance of more than 2.5%.
Around 10.35 am the index fell 2.67%, recovering from the lows at the beginning of the session when the index lost 4%.
It is almost redundant to indicate the performance of individual stocks today.
The banking index fell 3.5% dragged by a sharp drop in Unicredit (BIT:) which fell 3.9%, followed by Intesa (BIT:) at -3%. MPS (BIT:) fell 3.8%. The banking sector suffered a little more than others due to the expectations of the rate cut and following the rumour, which was later corrected, that the government would introduce a method of levy on credit institutions and insurance companies, and possibly in other sectors such as energy and luxury.
The energy sector also fell sharply with Brent prices down 1% on fears of a recession in Asia and the United States. Saipem (BIT:) lost 4.3%, Eni (BIT:) at -2.7%, but Snam (BIT:) and Terna (BIT:) fell by about 2.2% and 1.9% respectively.
(Giancarlo Navach, editing by Claudia Cristoferi)