- The leading American stock indices closed Thursday trading with a fall: the Dow lost 1% of its value, the S&P 500 fell by half a percent, and the Nasdaq fell by 0.6%.
- The quarterly reporting season is in full swing, yesterday, after the close of the American stock markets, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, published its numbers, to which the exchange rate reacted with an 11 percent jump after the company announced that it would pay a dividend for the first time in its history.
- The picture on the Asian stock exchanges is especially encouraging today, the South Korean Kospi index rose 1.2 percent, while the Hong Kong Hang Seng gained 2.5 percent and the Chinese Shanghai Composite gained 1 percent. The Japanese market also performed well, with the Nikkei rising by 0.8 percent.
- The European futures indices predict an uncertain opening, the DAX may start trading with a 0.2 percent fall, the CAC-40 with a 0.1 percent rise, and the FTSE-100 with stagnation.
What’s driving the markets today?
In terms of economic data, in the morning the KSH publishes fresh data on employment and unemployment. The question is whether the recent increase in the unemployment rate will continue or possibly reverse. In addition, the March popular movement statistics are still coming from the office.
In addition, last quarter’s MNB housing price index and S&P Global Ratings’ credit rating review will also be events of outstanding importance. From a Hungarian point of view, S&P’s rating is also crucial because we currently have the worst rating among the three major credit rating agencies. The BBB minus rating is one grade above the limit of the category recommended for investment. Although they assigned a stable outlook to this last year, in their latest emerging market assessment they significantly downgraded their expectations for Hungarian growth. This could even indicate that the stable outlook is being downgraded to negative.
On the corporate front, the American flash reports will be in focus today, with several of the big guns of the technology sector reporting this week.
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