A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Kevin Buckland
The shift out of the high-flying tech stocks that set the pace for last year's record global equity rallies gathered more steam, to the benefit of cyclical and value shares.
Case in point: Japan's tech-heavy Nikkei dropped 1% at the time of this narrative, after spiking to an all-time peak in the prior session. By contrast, the broader Topix index extended its record climb with a 0.4% advance.
It's analogous to how the Russell
2000 is outpacing the S&P 500 currently, gaining 0.7% overnight while the larger index lost 0.5%.
Capital.com analyst Kyle Rodda contended that while big drops this year for heavyweights like Apple, Meta and Microsoft can make for some ominous-looking declines in overall Wall Street indexes, the right way to view it is a healthy broadening out of the market's strength.
For Europe, futures portend an extension of the record highs set on Wednesday in Britain and other parts of the region.
Geopolitical risks are on the wane somewhat after U.S. President Donald Trump said he'd heard of a halt to the killing of protesters in Iran, lessening the chances of U.S. military action.
That saw crude oil pull back sharply from multi-month highs, and helped bring safe-haven gold down from an all-time peak.
Trump also de-escalated tensions with the Fed, saying he has no plan to fire Chair Jerome Powell, despite the criminal investigation into cost overruns for renovations of Fed headquarters.
However, Trump is not ceding any ground over his bid to buy Greenland, reiterating that the U.S. needs it even as the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark left a high-stakes meeting in Washington by repeating that the autonomous Danish territory is not for sale.
Key developments that could influence markets on Thursday:
-UK GDP estimate, services, industrial production, manufacturing output
-France, Spain, Sweden CPI
-Germany full-year GDP
-Euro zone industrial production
(Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
