The Spanish equities market saw a turnover of €652.907 billion in 2016, a decline of 32.1% from a year earlier. The fall is in line with the general decrease in volumes registered in stock markets across the world. In December, trading volumes fell 27.5% to €48.987 billion from a year earlier.
Julius Baer | Eurozone inflation is approaching its highest level since late 2013 with a December reading on Wednesday at 1.1%. A glance at the core inflation rate, which excludes the volatile food and energy component, delivers the explanation of the recent surge
BoAML | QE drove fund flows in 2016, but the past two months was all about reversing this trend. All-in-all, commodities, EM debt and IG were the winners; equities and HY the losers. For example, last week’s flows HG: +$1.6bn / HY: +$1.1bn / Equities: -$40mn
The number of jobless people registered with Spain’s unemployment offices stood at 3,7 million at end-December 2016, representing a fall of 390,534 people, or 9.54%, for the year as a whole. This is the fourth consecutive anual decline and the biggest since the historic series started in 1996, according to the Labour Ministry.
J.L. M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | The Spanish economy’s deleveraging process is still ongoing. But the data for Q3 shows different trends in financing capacity depending on the sector.
CaraxAlphavalue | We held the view a year ago that 2016 would be difficult. It turned out to be wrong from summer 2016. Still, we repeatedly mentioned that the 2016 earnings delivery would not be as strong as anticipated from a recovery year after a disastrous 2015. Price earnings ratio ambitions started 2016 with a +12% hope. By early 2017, we are down to 7.5% on our coverage (469 stocks with a combined market cap of about €9tn).
The UK’s Brexit has to build its own engine from scratch, and decide in which direction it wants the new car to go.
The first week of a new year is traditionally volatile, with a huge dispersion in the performance of the market indices. This can be seen clearly in the first 5 sessions of the Ibex 35 over the last few years: 2010 + 1.87 % ; 2011 – 3.03 % ; 2012 – 3.24 % ; 2013 + 3.50 % ; 2014 + 3.4 % ; 2015 – 1.6 % and in 2016 – 6.65 %. Independently of this very short-term positioning, Bankinter believes that 2017 will be the year for equities.
It looks like 2017 will present a lot of opportunities and challenges for the Spanish economy. It will grow at a good pace, creating jobs, with a minority government obliged to seek consensus on issues like education and pensions. Meeting our deficit commitments to Europe will remain a challenge after 2016.
Nick Malkoutzis via Macropolis | The Greek government expects the economy to grow by 2.7 percent and living, working and investing in Greece might seem a more enticing prospect. It is difficult, though, to be anything other than cautious about the prospects of such a turnaround. Firstly, there will have to be a dramatic improvement in several sectors of the economy for this kind of growth to be achieved.