{"id":964351,"date":"2024-07-04T17:35:45","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T17:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/dm-simulator-v2\/?p=964351"},"modified":"2024-07-04T17:35:45","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T17:35:45","slug":"european-shares-advance-on-rate-optimism-uk-election-in-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/european-shares-advance-on-rate-optimism-uk-election-in-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"European shares advance on rate optimism; UK election in focus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span>European shares rose on Thursday amid optimism around US interest rate cuts following soft economic data, while London markets gained as voting began in the UK general election with polls predicting a historic victory for the Labour party.<\/p>\n

The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.6% to a more one-week high.<\/p>\n

Britain’s FTSE 100 advanced 0.8%, with markets waiting to see how large a majority the\u00a0Labour Party\u00a0might win.<\/p>\n

“The UK outcome, widely expected to be a Labour victory, won’t have much impact unless there’s a big upset or surprising outcome, as markets have likely already discounted this,” said Bas van Geffen, senior macro strategist at Rabobank.<\/p>\n

French stocks advanced for a second day with a 0.8% rise amid intensified efforts by opponents of France’s National Rally (RN) to prevent the far-right party from gaining power.<\/p>\n

An\u00a0opinion poll\u00a0on Thursday showed RN is expected to fall short of an absolute majority in the second round of a parliamentary election on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0European lenders sub-index, which includes French lenders such as Societe Generale and BNP Paribas, gained on the news, up 1.3% and leading sectoral gains.<\/p>\n

Weak US data boosted sentiment on the likelihood of Federal Reserve rate cuts. First-time applications for US unemployment benefits\u00a0increased last week, indicating a cooling labour market.<\/p>\n

In Europe, German\u00a0industrial orders\u00a0fell unexpectedly in May, while another report showed\u00a0Swiss inflation\u00a0fell last month, encouraging markets to shorten their odds that the central bank will cut interest rates again later this year.<\/p>\n

“Today’s headlines may create dovish risk, but the stickiness in services and domestic inflation at the high end of the (Swiss National Bank)’s target corridor or above may be a concern,” strategists at Citigroup noted.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0European Central Bank\u00a0policymakers were mostly confident that inflation would continue to fall but some felt uneasy about cutting interest rates last month given a slew of negative surprises, the accounts of their meeting showed.<\/p>\n

Among individual stocks, Britain’s Smith & Nephew\u00a0rose 6.8% after activist investor Cevian Capital\u00a0disclosed a 5% stake\u00a0in the medical equipment maker.<\/p>\n

France’s Pluxee fell 9.2% after the voucher and benefits company\u00a0reported\u00a0weaker-than-expected third-quarter sales in Europe on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Sweden’s Ericsson\u00a0slipped 1.2% after the\u00a0telecoms equipment maker\u00a0recorded another impairment charge of 11.4 billion Swedish crowns ($1.09 billion) in the second quarter of 2024.<\/p>\n

Trading volumes were low on account of a public holiday in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0European shares rose on Thursday amid optimism around US interest rate cuts following soft economic data, while London markets gained as voting began in the UK general election with polls predicting a historic victory for the Labour party. The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.6% to a more one-week high. Britain’s FTSE 100 advanced 0.8%, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":964352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-964351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/964352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}