The Ibex-35 It ended Wednesday’s session with a slight decline, after a bullish streak that brings the Spanish stock market index closer to its best monthly performance in more than two years, in a context of relative optimism about the next steps of the big central banks.

“(This is) healthy profit-taking after the strong rise so far this year in the main indices,” said Bankinter analysts (BME:BKT) in a daily report.

At the start of the year, optimism prevailed about the resilience of large economies to the risk of recession and, especially, about the possibility that central banks – in particular the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank – will stop borrowing prices in the face of moderating price increases.

However, the context remains one of enormous uncertainty, given contradictory messages from central bank representatives and macroeconomic data of a disparate nature.

“Yesterday’s PMIs suggested that the Fed and ECB still have work to do,” said currency analysts at Monex Europe, who noted, however, that “a recession in the UK could slow the BoE (Bank of England) sooner than markets expect.”

The Bank of Canada on Wednesday raised its policy rate to 4.5 percent, the highest level in 15 years, and became the first major central bank battling global inflation to say it is likely to refrain from further hikes for now.

The selective Spanish stock market Ibex-35 closed with a fall of 9.60 points on Wednesday, or 0.11%, to 8,957.50 points, while the index of large European stocks FTSE Eurofirst 300 lost 0.26%.

So far this year, the selective Spanish stock market has only closed four of them in negative and accumulates a rebound of 8.85% in January, so, at the end of the month they will be the current levels, in January. With five sessions left to close the month, it would be the best monthly evolution since November 2020, when the first positive results in COVID-19 vaccine trials were known.

In the banking sector, Santander (BME:SAINT) lost 0.34%, BBVA (BME:BBVA) fell by 2.16%, Caixabank (BME:CABK) gave up 0.98%, Sabadell (BME:KNOW) gained 0.91%, Bankinter dropped 0.72% and Unicaja Banco lost 0.42%.

Among the large non-financial securities, Telefónica (BME:TEF) fell by 1.69%, Inditex (BME:ITX) advanced 0.84%, Iberdrola (BME:IBE) rose by 0.23%, Cellnex (BME:CLNX) fell by 0.68% and the oil company Repsol (BME:REP) lost 1.67%.