Mainly because of the tough corona lockdowns, gross domestic product only increased by a meager 0.4 percent within a year, as Beijing announced on Friday. However, retail sales were better than expected, strategists said. The CSI300 index of the largest listed mainland companies fell a significant 1.6 percent.

Investors are also looking at the government crisis in Italy: Although Mario Draghi’s government survived a vote of no confidence, the prime minister announced on Thursday evening that he would submit his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella. However, the President declined to resign.

Thereafter, the sell-off in the country’s government bonds accelerated. In return, yields rose. After the yield on 10-year government bonds rose to 3.549 percent on Thursday, they calmed down to 3.34 percent. The yield gap to the ten-year federal paper widened to 2.28 percentage points, the widest gap in a month.

On the stock market, too, tempers calmed down somewhat. After the Italian leading index FTSE MIB slipped 3.4 percent on Thursday to its lowest level since November 2020, the index rose by 1.3 percent on Friday morning.

Investors are once again focusing on the USA

In the USA, after the big banks JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, the rivals Citigroup and Wells Fargo will publish business figures for the second quarter. The industry got off to a bad start in the accounting season: the institutes reported a slump in profits because of billions in provisions.

The so-called small expiry day could cause price fluctuations: Options on shares and indices expire on the futures exchanges. Then options on indices and individual stocks will expire and settle. In the run-up to and on the day itself, institutional investors usually try to move the prices of the securities on which they hold derivatives in a direction that is favorable to them.

Investors should also keep an eye on the raw material markets: the price of copper continued to drop significantly and was already almost three percent lower in the early morning and dropped below the $7,000 a ton mark.

The price of the important industrial metal copper, a much-noticed economic barometer, has fallen by 30 percent since the beginning of July. The phenomenon of falling prices on the futures markets with a simultaneous tight supply situation in physical trading is even more pronounced on the copper market than with crude oil.

Robert Edwards, an expert on copper at the analysis company CRU, attributes the recent drop in prices to the withdrawal of financial investors. They have massively reduced their bets on the futures markets on rising copper prices. Stéphane Monier, chief investment strategist at private bank Lombard Odier, confirms: “Markets are increasingly pricing in the risk of a recession in the US and Europe in 2023.”

The price of North Sea oil Brent has climbed back to the $100 mark for a 159-liter barrel. Crude oil prices have fallen from $123 a barrel in early June to $97. However, this is still well above the range of 60 to 70 dollars in which the oil price was moving before the outbreak of the corona crisis, and very few expect prices to continue to fall significantly.

Because the supply side of the oil market is still limited. Saudi Arabia and the other countries in the OPEC plus oil alliance want to increase their oil production from September. But many state oil exporters are already producing at the capacity limit.

The gold price is also under slight pressure again and is moving back towards $1700 a troy ounce. So far this week, the precious metal has lost almost two percent.

Above all, concerns about an even larger US interest rate hike after the renewed rise in inflation figures are causing the price to continue to fall, since bonds with their current yields would continue to become more attractive as an alternative to gold. The continued strength of the US dollar is also weighing on the price of gold because it makes the precious metal less attractive to investors outside the US.

Look at individual values

Unipers: Uniper shares jumped almost ten percent in the MDax. The ailing energy supplier benefited from the fact that the US investment bank Goldman Sachs canceled its sell recommendation and now recommends the stock as “neutral”.

Software Inc: Software AG shares lost eight and a half percent. They thus continued their descent and slipped to the lowest level since spring 2020. The group lowered its annual target for incoming orders in the digitization division.

Drägerwerk: After the slump in sales and earnings in the first half of the year, investors threw Drägerwerk out of their depots. Shares fell more than 5 percent. The medical technology manufacturer has presented “terrible” quarterly figures, said a dealer. In view of the negative EBIT margin, it is difficult to imagine that the profitability target will be achievable for the year as a whole.

Alibaba: In Hong Kong, the shares of the online retailer fell by up to almost five percent. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the group’s cloud service is being scrutinized by state authorities in connection with lost police data.

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