Europe close: Stocks finish week on a confident note
Stocks finished the week on a strong note after the US signalled that it is open to restarting trade talks with China.
Overnight, the US Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, said "To the extent that China wants to make structural changes, I and the administration are available [...] We are not advocating tariffs. We are advocating fair trade."
Commenting on the current market backdrop, David Madden at CMC Makets UK said: "Yesterday stocks bounced back as the fears regarding a trade war subsided. The absence of harsh words from the US and China encouraged traders to step into the market and snap up stocks. Investors are getting used to the pattern, whereby equity markets can recover after a big sell-off that was triggered on account of trade tensions. In keeping with recent trends, the US indices held up better than their European counterparts."
By the end of the day, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was ahead by 0.17% or 0.66 points to 385.03, alongside a rise of 0.38% or 47.76 points to 12,540.73 for the German Dax, while the Cac-40 was ahead by 0.43% or 23.30 points to 5,429.20.
In parallel, euro/dollar was off by 0.02% to 1.16682.
However, data released in China was acting as a bit of a drag; in particular the latest trade figures, which revealed a larger-than-expected slowdown in the country's import growth, from a year-on-year pace of 26.0% for May to 14.1% in June (consensus: 21.3%).
"This suggests that domestic demand may have started to weaken again last month after receiving a temporary boost earlier in Q2 from the easing of winter pollution controls," said Julian Evans-Pritchard at Capital Economics.
Economic data in Europe was light on the ground at the end of the week, with INE reporting that harmonised Spanish consumer prices for June printing at up by 0.2% month-on-month and 2.3% year-on-year as expected.