- ArcelorMittal falls 8% along with bad days for Popular and Indra
- Telefonica recovers despite cyberattack at firm’s headquarters
Friday was the first and only day the Ibex 35 finished higher this week with a gain of 0.33%, which led to a loss of 2.14% for the week, finishing below 10,900 (10,897 points). The Spanish index keeps correcting the gains since the first round of French elections.
- 11.435,700
- -0,28%
For José María Rodríguez, technical analyst at Bolsamanía, “what is happening in recent sessions in the Ibex 35 is known as an imposing upward gap. This is the gap that our index, as with our European neighbours, has seen progress since the first round of elections in France.”
The rest of the European exchanges closed the day with moderate gains, with the FTSE 100 at 0.48%, the DAX at 0.30% and the CAC 40 by 0.20%.
Telefónica, the cause of the strong losses of yesterday, closed 0.25% higher after a cyberattack on its IT sector. The biggest fallers on Friday were ArcelorMittal, losing 8.13% after reporting its first quarter results. Indra and Banco Popular also fell on Friday.
On the opposite side, construction firms Acciona and ACS rose with force (+3%), while Gas Natural gained 2.8%. Among the heavyweights of the index, Inditex rose 1.60%, Iberdrola 0.9%, while BBVA closed flat. Repsol fell 0.24% and Santander by 0.53%.
After four consecutive sessions of falls, the Ibex fell below 11,000 points, a level it hit for the first time since August 2015. In fact, the index was among the best performing markets after the victory of Donald Trump in the US in November.
34 of the Ibex’s companies have reported their fiscal results for the first quarter, with Inditex relying on a different fiscal calendar. The companies have seen increased profits of 32% against the same period last year.
In macro terrain, CPI for Spain was confirmed at 2.6% for April pushed on by tourism and gas. In Germany, GDP reflected growth in the quarter of 0.6%, in line with what was expected.
In the commodity market, Brent crude fell 0.45% to $50.56, while West Texas fell 0.61% to $47.54. In the foreign currency markets, the euro registered gains of 0.54% against the dollar at $1.0922.
Rodríguez pointed out that “we have already commented on numerous occasions that these type of gaps, in the majority of cases, end up being filled or partially filled. Evidently we don’t know if the correction will take us as low as 10,530 points (50%) or it will be completely filled to 10,2380 points. But this week’s fall remains inside the normal parameters.”
