Jens Bastian via Macropolis | The German government’s view of the candidates for prime minister ahead of Greece’s early elections on July 7 is rather ambiguous. This is largely due to the fact that PM Tsipras has undergone a remarkable political transition in office. His efforts at staging various policy U-turns over the course of the past four years have led to an impressive reassessment in Berlin of his term as Greek prime minister.
Chris Iggo (AXA IM) | Navigating through all the noise out there, it seems the most sensible expectation that investors should have is described by “lower rates but no recession”. Central banks were more dovish again this week and the Fed looks as though it is ready to meet markets expectations on cutting rates. There are risks to growth from a range of things, but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of the easier monetary policy message.
Alphavalue | The Spanish government prepares measures to block corporate operations among listed companies in which the State has a stake.
The Bank of Spain will maintain of the counter-cyclical buffer at 0%, arguing that (a) the credit-GDP gap continues in negative territory, and (b) the Spanish economy still shows a remarkable strength as the GDP increased by 0, 7% t/t in 1Q19.
Jean-Christophe Delfim (Edmond de Rothschild ) | Economic growth in the Eurozone was 1.9% in 2018. However, in the last quarter a slowdown was observed to 1.2% yoy, due to the negative contribution of the trade balance (-0.4 pp), as a consequence of the sharp deceleration in exports provoked by international trade disputes.
The Spanish hotel chain announced a single dividend payment for 2018 of 0.183 euros/share (+8.9% vs 2017; in line with what was expected), date ex date 5 July and date of payment 9 July. Yield 2.2%.
Shareholders approved the payment of a gross dividend of 1.175 euros/share charged to 2018, 3.5% more than the previous year.
Peter Isackson via Fair Observer | The media will never tire of Warren Buffett’s oracular pronouncements, nor will it dare to put them in perspective or critique them.
The latest profit warning from Nucor for Q2 (1.20-1.25% vs consensus 1.48$) seems to confirm the weakening of tendencies in the steel sector in this period.
“Beyond our scepticism about the ability of new stimulus measures to drive the economy, we recognise that the ECB is obliged to act which will create a situation unfavourable for its inflation targets,” analysts at Intermoney point out. In this scenario, we consider that the reactivation of asset purchases with certain adjustments (based on the reality of German debt) would be the measure with the greatest positive impact, more so than interest rate cuts. Nevertheless, if the second path is explored, it would be accompanied by measures to mitigate the effect of negative rates on the banking sector.