Markets Climb Higher After Record Wall Street Closing – Live Business | Business

European stock markets began the new week with caution, led by a rebound in Italy.

Shares of Italian banks jumped 1%, after S & P confirmed its country's credit rating, BBB, on Friday night.

Rome's public debt is also picking up, relieving the fact that Italy has not been downgraded even though it went into recession last year.

Chinese factories have boosted confidence in the markets today by reporting a recovery in profits.

In March, profits rose 13.9 percent to 589.52 billion yuan (67 billion US dollars), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. This reverses a 14% in the first two months of 2019 and could indicate that economic conditions are improving.

Hello and welcome to our slippery coverage of the global economy, financial markets, the eurozone and businesses.

The mood on the markets is optimistic today after the fall of the Wall Street record on Friday night.

Investors draw on stronger US growth figures than expected on Friday. The news that US GDP grew at a rate of 3.2% a year pushed the S & P 500 to new highs at the end of last week, extending its strong growth since the beginning of the year. ;year.

Asian investors took over and rushed this morning. The Chinese reference CSI 300 1.3%, the Hong Kong index Hang Seng 0.9% and South Korea Kospi 200 is almost 2%.

Fears of a weakening of the world's largest economy eased, and even much of US growth in the last quarter was due to stock-building and lower imports (boosting net trade).

Persistent hopes of a breakthrough in the US-China trade war are also helping markets – officials must resume negotiations tomorrow.

Konstantinos Anthis, head of research at ADSS, says that traders are moody optimistic – maybe as well optimistic….

For the securities operators, it seems that the important catalysts are on the rise: the United States sees a strong domestic growth, a low inflation keeps the Fed at a distance and could possibly trigger a reduction of the rates. short term.

In fact, we think investors should take a more cautious approach as US markets hit record highs and 10-year yields fall below 2.5%, suggesting imminent liquidation. In any case, market participants do not seem to share our skepticism, and equity futures in Europe and the United States point to a positive opening bell.

Also coming today

Spanish traders will digest last night's election results, which saw the ruling Socialist Party win the largest number of seats … and strong gains for the far-right Vox party.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, delivers the keynote address to a FinTech conference in London today – we will be paying attention to the fireworks.

One of Donald Trump's usual mantras is that US inflation is very weak. We will see if he is right later today, when the latest core inflation data from PCE will be released. Economists predict a drop of 1.8% to 1.7%, which could strengthen the president's reaction against interest rate hikes.

L & # 39; s calendar

• 9:10 am BoE Governor Mark Carney speaks at Innovate Finance Global Summit
• 10:00 BST: consumer and industry confidence data from the euro area
• 1:30 pm TSB: Basic data on US inflation