European Equity Market Handover: “Difficult times” keep stocks marching lower

Stock market snapshot as of [22/5/2019 4:53 PM]

• China’s President Xi Xinping has urged the country to prepare for a “a new Long March” with “difficult situations”, an unsubtle and pessimistic assessment of the prospects that a trade agreement could be made with the United States anytime soon
• But Xi will still meet U.S. President Donald Trump in June, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The comment cushioned the latest fall by U.S. stock markets, as they track European indices in a confirmed declining trend
• The DAX and the FTSE at least, managed to seize small gains into their closes

Corporate News

• The S&P’s Information Technology sector remains among the weakest, but ‘Communications’ – more commonly known as Facebook, Alphabet, Twitter and TripAdvisor – outshone all, with strong gains.
• The stay of execution for Huawei (till August) which in turn allows it to continue using Alphabet’s Android operating system, wafts some calm across the consumer Big Tech space
• Outperforming software shares also helped advance software stocks on Germany’s DAX
• But there’s no doubt these remain nervy times. Also, badly timed times for Qualcomm, the giant maker of 5G chips which are at the heart of it all. A U.S. judge ruled that it violated antitrust laws, adding more weight to its shares. They were down 8% just now
• Oil shares fared worst among U.S. industrial indices after crude prices accelerated earlier declines. Official U.S. weekly inventories showed the biggest builds in the Midwest and Gulf Coast regions since 2017. July crude futures traded about 2% lower 

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