North Korea launches missile over Japan
The Ibex 35 fell 0.42% on Friday to 10,317 points, but ended three weeks of losses in the Spanish index and saw it finish up 1.85% this week. The last three weeks it fell 1.9%, 0.19% and 0.39%. That came in a difficult context in which international relations were strained by North Korea, Catalonia and an explosion in London.
In relation to stocks on friday, Siemens Gamesa was down 4.5%, followed by Grifols (-3.35%) after it received a negative rating from Kepler analysts. Mediaset was up 2.34%, accompanied by Indra which rose 1.16% and Inditex with a gain of 0.93%. The rest of the bluechips fell, such as BBVA by 0.83%, Iberdrola by 0.01%, while Telefonica was flat.
North Korea launched a new missile which travelled over Japan. The new launch is considered a response to sanctions handed out by the UN this week. In London (FTSE down 1.1%), an explosion on an Underground station left 18 people injured in a suspected terrorist attack.
Markets were mostly down lightly, and have learned to live with the ‘new normal’ with independence movements, nuclear bombs and terrorist attacks. In Asia, the Nikkei gained 0.6% while the Kospi also closed up. In the US futures fell, but lightly. In Europe, apart from the FTSE, the losses were moderate.
In today’s economic data, retail sales in the US for the month of August disappointed. The consensus was that it would rise between 0.1% and 0.5% excluding auto sales, but they fell 0.2% in general and only rose 0.2% excluding autos.
Industrial production for August was down 0.9%, against the expected rise of 0.1%.
Above all though, eyes were on the quadruple witching, with the sale of options and futures on both sides of the Atlantic, which usually increases the volume and volatility of trading, especially in the last hours of the day.
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
“The Ibex 35 finished up 1.7% for the week. In reality, it was all done on Monday, leaving us with an upper gap of 10,129 points. The rest of the week saw a narrow range of prices. The only problem we see is that while our European neighbours have clearly confirmed the surpassing of resistances the Ibex has not,” said Bolsamanía analyst José María Rodríguez.
“Only above this higher part of the channel, will we be able to look towards a new level.”