European stocks open lower after winning week

Luxury British retailer Burberry reported Earnings season has started with an 18% rise in sales in the quarter ended July 1.

Sales in Europe, Middle East, India and Africa increased by 17%. But its biggest success came in Asia, with sales in mainland China up 46%, South Asia-Pacific up 39% and Japan up 44%. Sales in the US fell 8%.

The company reiterated its full-year guidance and announced a £400m share buyback to be completed by the end of the calendar year.

The fund manager behind a fixed income fund that pays a 10% dividend has predicted a “debt collapse” for the wider economy in the near future.

However, the portfolio manager expects the fund to remain well-positioned in such a scenario while generating market-beating returns.

It is one of the few funds currently offering double-digit yields to retail investors across Europe.

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– Ganesh Rao

Funding for fintech startups globally fell 49% to $23 billion in the first half of 2023 from a year earlier, S&P Global Market Intelligence data shows.

Deal numbers in the first six months of 2023 totaled 1,178 – a 64% decline from the same period last year.

Meanwhile, mega funding rounds above $100 million were in short supply, with just nine in the second quarter of 2023, 23 in the first quarter of 2023 and 55 in the second quarter of 2022, according to S&P.

S&P said the Silicon Valley bank’s failure in March “reduced investors’ risk appetite.”

“The big-ticket deals — Stripe’s $6.87 billion, an Ant Group unit’s $1.5 billion and PhonePe’s $850 million — masked the deterioration in the fintech financial environment in the first half of 2023,” said Sampath Sharma Narianuri, fintech research analyst at S&P. Global market intelligence.

However, Narianuri expects a “recovery in the public market valuation of tech stocks, a stabilization in interest rates and an increase in M&A activity” to boost the second half of 2023.

– Sheila Chiang

The International Monetary Fund said China’s growth is slowing due to weak private investment and a slowdown in exports and falling domestic demand.

Spokesperson of the organization Julie Kozak told a conference“The pace of growth has been slowing in China recently, largely due to weaker-than-expected private investment,” pointing to a recent decline in exports after seeing a strong performance in the first quarter of the year.

“The overall picture for China’s growth is one of a slower economy, and this is consistent with the forecast we had in April,” the “updated forecast” for China will reflect in the IMF’s next World Economic Outlook.

– Jihye Lee

The producer price index, a measure of what wholesalers pay for goods, rose 0.1% in June. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected a 0.2% increase. Core PPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, also fell by 0.1% – more than expected.

– Fred Imbert

Reserve Bank of Australia deputy governor Michael Bullock has been appointed as the new central bank governor, the country’s Treasury said on Friday.

He succeeds incumbent Philip Lowe, whose term ends on August 17 – bringing to a close his 43 years at the bank. Treasurer Jim Chalmers described Bullock’s appointment as “the perfect balance between providing exceptional experience and expertise and providing a fresh leadership perspective.”

Bullock’s appointment means the RBA will have a vacant deputy governor post, which the government said will be filled in the coming months.

– Lim Hui Jee

Federal Reserve Board Governor Christopher Waller has voiced the need for two more rate hikes to bring inflation down to its target.

“I see two more 25-basis point hikes in the target range in the remaining four meetings this year,” he said at an event at New York University on Thursday.

He called the latest Consumer Price Index estimate, which showed a cooling inflation rate, “welcome” news, while adding that “one data point does not make a trend.”

“I need to see this progress before I can be sure that inflation has come down,” he said.

– Jihye Lee

Bank of America has described the AI ​​opportunity in the software industry as “undeniably vast” and ranked European companies in the field.

Along with productivity improvements, we see Gen AI as an opportunity for the software industry to capture both an enhanced value proposition and potential revenue enhancements through data monetization,” the bank said.

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– Lucy Handley

In another good sign for the market, the S&P 500 is now up 3.3% since the Fed began raising rates in March 2022. The move comes as traders cheer the central bank’s prospects of reining in inflation without pushing the economy into recession.

“For the first time in 2023, we’re being asked by many clients if we think the S&P 500 is now on track to track an ATH by the end of the year. I’d say yes,” wrote Goldman Sachs’ John Flood. Note Wednesday.

– Fred Imbert