The fears about supplies of Russian gas to Europe and lockdowns created by the pandemic in China, together with the wavering performance of Wall Street, lead the continental lists to inaugurate the week in decline. Meanwhile, the euro is close to parity with the dollar.
There is no shortage of reasons for uncertainty in this period. In the foreground today is the closure for about ten days, for maintenance, of Nord Stream 1, the most important channel which carries Russian gas to Germany and therefore to Europe. The fear is that in reality the taps will remain sealed for quite some time, so much so that the bloc's economy commissioner, Paolo Gentiloni, says that the EU is very worried and that the stop increases the risks of an "adverse economic scenario ”, essentially a recession.
As far as China is concerned, however, there is even talk of one new variant very contagious (the umpteenth version of Omicron) which makes its nefarious effects felt on raw materials.
Europe in red
In this context Business Square, which had attempted a recovery in the middle of the session, closed the session with a loss of 0,95% at 21.567 basis points, weighed down mainly by the selling of financial stocks.
Frankfurt is the worst and falls by 1,4%, with the focus on Daimler, -2,53%, after Mercedes Benz sales plunged in the second quarter due to supply chain problems and coronavirus-related restrictions in China. Also, it sinks Uniper (-15,66%), among the first to report the impact of the drop in Russian supplies, in the wake of a dispute between Germany and Finland over the costs of bailing out the gas importer.
In the rest of Europe Paris loses 0,61%, Amsterdam -0,75% Madrid -0,4%. It is practically colorless London.
Technological peaks on Wall Street
The main Wall Street indices are also moving in negative territory, where Twitter goes down about 8,45%, following the about-face of Elon Musk who no longer wants to buy the famous social platform. Things are bad for techies and gamblers. Stocks from Wynn Resorts (-5%) and Las Vegas Sands (-4,6%) are in the red after Macau, the world's largest gaming hub, by revenue, closed its casinos for the first time every two years to try to contain the spread of Covid-19.
During the week, investors will also be able to take measures with stars and stripes inflation, since consumer prices will be seen on Wednesday and producer prices on Thursday. The same day will start the quarterly season, starting with the banks, which will be able to tell something about the feared, possible, future recession.
Euro close to parity with the dollar
In anticipation of these major events and on the growing bets of a hawkish Fed at the month-end meeting, the dollar is getting stronger, while the euro is marching towards parity and is currently trading in the 1,007 area, after having dropped to 1,005.
Among the raw materials, the Petroleum: Brent loses 2,1% and trades around 104,77 dollars a barrel.
Piazza Affari suffers with the banks; Autogrill collapses
Piazza Affari closes in the red with banks and more generally with financial stocks: Bper -4,54% Banco bpm -3,51% General Bank -2,94% Banca Mediolanum -2,77% Unipol -2,63% Finecobank -2,51%. Among the middleweights he goes down Montepaschi, -5,87%.
They are in red industrial stocks like Iveco -4,42% Cnh -3,49% Prysmian -2,9% Interpump -2,31%.
On the podium of the main list there is Saipem, +5,25%, at the end of the last day of the two billion euro capital increase. The group announced today the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese group Cimc Raffles in order to explore new collaborations in the off-shore drilling, off-shore construction and New Energies sectors.
It bounces Terna +1,55%. Well Campari +0,97% and Recordati + 0,67%.
Outside the main basket it is the protagonist in the negative Rest, -7,42% (6,34 euros per share), after the announcement of integration with Dufry. The operation, which comes after negotiations made official at the end of June, involves the transfer to Dufry of the 50,3% stake in Autogrill held by Edizione (Benetton) in exchange for newly issued Dufry shares with an exchange of 0,158 Dufry shares for every Autogrill share.
The offer represents a 25-30% discount on Autogrill's Friday prices, Dufry CEO Xavier Rossinyol said this morning during a conference call with reporters. With the share swap, Edizione will hold approximately 25,2% of Dufry's capital.
It shines instead Fincantieri, +8,56%, which celebrates the order for the construction of a new extra-luxury cruise ship, worth around 1,2 billion.
Spreads over 200 basis points
Salt it slightly spread between the ten-year Italian and German, which closes at 201 basis points (+1,46%) with rates at +3,20% and +1,19% respectively.
The secondary was also affected by the confused political situation in Italy, after Montecitorio gave the vote in the afternoon the go-ahead for aid, but without the five stars who did not participate in the vote. Due to the attitude of the grillini, the leader of Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi, officially asked Mario Draghi for a government audit.
