With the elections, the markets returned to turmoil and the spread raised its head well beyond the "Monti" threshold of 287 points. At the end of the week, the tensions on the Btp-bund differential returned to around 300 points after the president of the ECB Mario Draghi reassured: "The markets understand that we are in a democracy and, after an initial moment of excitement, now it seems to me that they are back under the same conditions as before the elections”. However, the jolt in February was enough to send the performance of the price lists into the red since the beginning of the year.
The Ftse Mib has in fact eaten up the increases achieved in January and closed the month of February with a drop of 8,7%, bringing the performance for the two months to -2,2%. In the meantime volatility on the index nearly doubled compared to the beginning of 2013. The monthly update of Borsa Italiana in fact indicates that volatility has shot up to around 30% compared to January levels when it stood at around 17% with peaks of 20%. For now, the situation is not out of control, it is not comparable to the flight of investors and capital from Italy a year ago, then stemmed by the cartridges of the ECB (with the OMT programme).
At the moment we can speak of a “technical correction”, as underlined in recent days in an interview with Firstonline Claudia Segre, general secretary of Assiom Forex. But without a solution for governing the country (and the resolution of various growth problems that have been dragging on for some time) the verdict of the markets could be more drastic. "Inconclusive elections" is Fitch's opinion which arrived on Friday with the markets closed: the agency, the only one that had not yet reduced the opinion on Italy of the three sisters of the rating (the others are Moody's and S&P), cut the credit credit rating to BBB+ with a negative outlook of A-. Basically for Fitch we are a couple of steps above the junk level. S&P had already raised the rating to this level before the Italian elections (and reassured that post-election uncertainty will not affect the rating) just as Moody's had already reduced it to Baa2. After the elections, the latter underlined that it may consider a downgrade of Italy in the event that there is a material worsening of the country's economic prospects.
Waiting to understand if the correction will become something worse, let's start taking stock of the February battlefield. The spread flew over 320 basis points with peaks at over 350. Numerous corpses in Piazza Affari. On the Ftse Mib the banks collapse with Unicredit losing 16,4%, closely followed by Intesa Sanpaolo with -16,3% and Banco Popolare -14,6%. Followed by the Bper -13,9%, Monte dei Paschi di Siena -13,7%, also sunk by the troubled events of the Alexandria case. and Mediobanca -12,7%. An exception is the Bpm which ranks among the top ten stocks of the Ftse Mib with an increase of 5,9%. However, the biggest thuds were recorded by Telecom Italia -22,9% and Finmeccanica -21%. A2A -14,2% and Enel -13,8% were also among the ten stocks with the greatest decline.
On the other hand, luxury is highlighted in the main basket, construction and food. Salvatore Ferragamo stands out with +12%, while Tod's archives +9,9% and Luxottica +3,7%. Buzzi Unicem's cement and construction companies are among the top ten stocks in terms of performance, with a +11,45 second best stock in the Ftse Mib, and Impregilo +5,3%. Autogrill (+8,5%), Prysmian +6,6%, Campari +5,3% and Terna +2,7% also performed well.
The best performances on the whole list are instead of Gemina savings +51,3%, Seat Pagine Gialle savings +43,2%, Frendy Energy +38,7%, Tesmec +20,8%, D'Amico +19,9 %. The most traded stocks by turnover were Unicredit, Eni, Intesa, Enel, Generali.
