The week saw fluctuations in the global markets, triggered by apprehension over a possible recession in the United States. This comes amid the unveiling of July’s employment data for the US and an upswing in the yen’s strength, following the interest rate increase by the Bank of Japan on 31st July. Consequently, investors started to withdraw from yen carry trades.
On a positive note, the Irish market ended the week on the stronger side, with a gain of just above 1% at the closing bell. The end of the week saw banking stocks flourish, with AIB seeing a 1.15% increase, whereas Bank of Ireland observed a 1% rise. Permanent TSB also saw an upswing, ending at a 1% higher at €1.53.
Food stocks, on the other hand, saw a variable performance. Kerry witnessed an increase of nearly 0.5%, putting the day’s closing figure at €86.05. Glanbia, unfortunately, saw a drop of 0.6%. Notably, stocks in the travel and leisure sector performed well, with Ryanair stocks increasing by 3.2% to put the closing figure at €15.06. At the same time, the Dalata Hotel Group’s shares raised by 1.7% to end at €4.13. Irish Continental, the ferry group, achieved a near 3% rise during the session.
Over in London, the principal equity indices – FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 – experienced slumps for the second week in succession. Despite Friday witnessing gains in the same, thanks to positive performance from home builder stocks, the week ended with the indices at a lower position. This is despite positive US job data that somewhat quelled fears of an economic slowdown in the world’s largest economy.
After Bellway’s promising projection of the sector in wake of the Bank of England’s interest rate cut and the new governments’ proposed layout reforms, home builder stocks emerged as top gainers, with a 1.5% rise.
Worthy of mention was Hargreaves Lansdown’s 2.3% gain post the approval of a €6.35 billion (equivalent to £5.44 billion) takeover by an international consortium.
In Europe, the Stoxx 600 index recorded a marginal weekly advance, concluding with a 0.6% rise and temporarily reaching the 500-point mark again during the day.
In a European trading update, there were increases between 0.1 and 0.8 per cent for the French CAC 40, the DAX index in Germany, Spain’s IBEX 35, and Italy’s FTSE MIB. The top company in Europe based on market value, Nordisk, rose 6.3 per cent, registering a consecutive daily gain in the aftermath of Wednesday’s downturn due to a lacklustre profit forecast.
Boosted by an upturn of 5.5 per cent in LEG Immobilien, one of Germany’s top publicly traded property owners, who announced a less than anticipated loss for Q2, the property sector led the sectoral gains. Additionally, Lotus Bakeries, the Belgian snack company, saw around a 7 per cent uptick following a report of increased earnings and revenue for the first half of the year.
In contrast, US markets experienced a volatile week that was marked by a dramatic rise in the value of the low-yield yen and concern of a potential recession in the world’s leading economy, leading to potential weekly losses for the key Wall Street indexes.Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were heading towards a fourth consecutive week of decline with all significant indexes set to record weekly losses.
There were mixed results for the largest and fastest-growing shares, with Alphabet falling more than 1 per cent and Amazon rising by 0.6 per cent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped 0.34 per cent in early trade to 39,313.21, the S&P 500 fell 0.12 per cent to 5,313.04 and the Nasdaq Composite dipped 0.1 per cent to 16,644.89. Nine out of the eleven key S&P sectors traded lower, primarily led by losses in utilities and communication services.
Paramount Global enjoyed a 4.7 per cent increase as the company’s streaming business growth was welcomed by investors. Additionally, video game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software observed a 2.6 per cent rise as it announced a forecast of net bookings growth in its 2026 and 2027 fiscal years.
This update includes reporting from Reuters.