It was another strong week for the European markets, with the STOXX 600 making new all-time highs.
The S&P 500 is a different story and is down by over 2% this week as concerns around AI prospects have cooled sentiment and taken the major US indices to 6-week lows.
Tesla (NSQ:TSLA) is down by 14% in five days. Talismanic CEO Elon Musk - officially the world’s richest man - has been working with the Trump administration and continuing to make headlines on a daily basis. But the company has also seen a very sharp drop in EU and UK sales. Competition from BYD has intensified, and Musk’s political activity may be alienating some potential customers.
NVIDIA (NSQ:NVDA) also had a tough week, down 11%. Revenues continue to grow at an explosive pace but sentiment is more fragile after the release of cheap software by Chinese AI upstart DeepSeek. Nvidia’s Q4 earnings did beat expectations and full-year revenue more than doubled to $130.5 billion. This stock remains the bellwether for investor sentiment around AI.
The FTSE has been solid again, up 1%, with many FTSE-100 components reporting results recently. Rolls-Royce Holdings (LON:RR.) made an important contribution, up 19% following a strong set of results that also saw it announce a £1bn buyback and the payment of dividends for the first time since Covid-19.
In the calendar for the week ahead, we have US non-farm payrolls to look forward to along with a slew of big-cap UK company announcements.
With non-farm payrolls, it is expected that the United States will record the creation of another 133,000 jobs. Job growth has been steady and the unemployment rate is stable at 4%.
In the UK, some of the announcements that I’ll be watching out for include the likes of Greggs (LON:GRG), Reach (LON:RCH) and TT electronics (LON:TTG). Once again there will be no shortage of results for us to review.
Economic Calendar
Monday 3rd | ||
09:00 | EU/Germany | PMI Manufacturing |
09:30 | UK | Consumer Credit/M4 Money Supply/Mortgage Approvals |
09:30 | UK | PMI Manufacturing |
10:00 | EU | Consumer Price Index |
14:45 | US | PMI Manufacturing |
15:00 | US | Construction Spending |
15:00 | US | ISM Manufacturing |
Tuesday 4th | ||
10::00 | EU | Unemployment Rate |
15:00 | US | Factory Orders |
Wednesday 5th | ||
09:00 | EU | PMI Composite |
09:30 | UK | PMI… |
