Spain’s main stock index opened higher on Monday and surpassed the psychological barrier of 9,500 points not seen for more than three years, although current levels could be jeopardized depending on upcoming macroeconomic and monetary developments.
European markets were supported by the slight rise in US futures, which point to an upward trend on Wall Street on Monday, while the market awaits the appearances of Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, on Tuesday and Wednesday, as well as the February US employment report.
Investors have resigned themselves to more rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, but expect them to remain quarter-point in magnitude rather than returning to half-point hikes, so better-than-expected job-creation data could derail the recent rally rally.
“We expect (Powell) to maintain his discourse on the need for additional rate hikes to control inflation and the need for these hikes to remain data-dependent,” said analysts at Renta 4 (BME:RTA4) in its daily market report.
In that direction were precisely the words of Mario Centeno, member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB), who declared on Monday that the decisions taken after the increasingly likely rise in interest rates of 50 basis points (bps) scheduled for the end of this month, must be based on the macroeconomic indicators that are known.
Otherwise, in Monday’s session the Sentix business confidence indicator (09:30 GMT) and retail sales (10:00 GMT) of the euro area, and industrial orders of the United States (15:00 GMT) will be known.
Over the weekend, the Chinese government’s GDP growth forecast for this year (5%) was more cautious than expected, although markets seem confident that reality will exceed projections.
At 08:05 GMT on Monday, the selective Spanish stock market Ibex-35 was up 42.60 points, or 0.45%, at 9,507.40 points, the highest level since February 21, 2020 – at the time the stock market panic began due to COVID-19 – while the FTSE index of large European stocks Eurofirst 300 advanced 0.21%.
In the banking sector, Santander (BME:SAINT) rose 1.21%, BBVA (BME:BBVA) was recorded by 0.70%, Caixabank (BME:CABK) advanced 0.83%, Sabadell (BME:KNOW) gained 1.79%, Bankinter (BME:BKT) was revalued by 1.04% and Unicaja Banco rose by 1.25%.
Among the large non-financial securities, Telefónica (BME:TEF) was recorded by 0.74%, Inditex (BME:ITX) advanced 0.20%, Iberdrola (BME:IBE) was revalued by 0.28%, Cellnex (BME:CLNX) gained 0.06% and the oil company Repsol (BME:REP) rose 0.52%.
The most punished stock was Grifols (BME:GRLS), after receiving an “equal weighting” recommendation from Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS).
