EU stocks near five year high following positive earnings results from financial and auto firms

Due to the holiday period, there will be no regular market analysis updates on the City Index website until Thursday, January 2, 2013. European Stocks […]


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By :  ,  Financial Analyst

Due to the holiday period, there will be no regular market analysis updates on the City Index website until Thursday, January 2, 2013.

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European Stocks edged higher today, nearly reaching a five-year high by midday, with the Germany future index climbing by nine points and reaching an approximate level of 9021.
France’s CAC 40 also increased by 13 points to 9026.

This increase is stimulated by positive and encouraging company results from the automobile and financial sectors. The automobile sector has shown an increase of 1.5%, which was led by a 5.8% jump in Finnish tyre-maker Nokian Renkaat after it published better than expected profits.

The market equally gained optimism from a 1.2% gain in the banking industry, with Spain’s Banco Popular increasing by 6.9% after publishing better-than-expected earnings due to capital gains.

However, not all reported earnings were positive on Thursday, including Royal Dutch Shell that reported lower than expected earnings. This pushed its shares down by 4.5%. According to investors, the earnings that are currently being published are weak but stable. The main point is that the broader environment is a lot more supportive of equity prices.

Moving over to the US, the Fed kept its stimulus plan as was previously speculated by investors but did not seem as concerned about the economy as anticipated. Lastly, the unemployment claims figures at 1.30pm GMT came out just as expected at 340k.

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