At around 09:00 in Lisbon, the EuroStoxx 600 was down 0.73% to 545.83 points. The stock exchanges in London, Paris, and Frankfurt declined 0.55%, 0.70%, and 1.05%, respectively, while those in Madrid and Milan fell 1.39% and 1.36%. The Lisbon stock exchange deepened its negative trend from the opening, and by 09:15, the main index, the PSI, dropped 0.79% to 7,468.18 points.
The euro, after trading above 1.16 dollars on Thursday, depreciated today by 0.40% to 1.154 dollars. Investors were keenly watching to see if, following Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic facilities, the meeting scheduled for Sunday between the US and Iran regarding Iran’s nuclear program would proceed. High geopolitical tension pushed oil prices up by more than 5%.
Brent crude, the European benchmark, rose 5.09%, with the barrel priced at 72.89 dollars, while the West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, increased 5.22% to 71.59 dollars. Gold, a safe-haven asset in times of uncertainty, climbed 0.97%, with the ounce priced at 3,418.1 dollars.
In Asia, the main indicator of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Nikkei, dropped 0.89% today in response to the military escalation between Israel and Iran. Meanwhile, the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s benchmark index lost 0.75%, and Shenzhen fell 1.1%. The Hang Seng, minutes before closing, was down 0.81%.
Wall Street closed higher on Thursday, driven by better-than-expected inflation data and the quarterly results of technology company Oracle, which surged 13%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.24%, the S&P 500 advanced 0.38%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.24%.
In the bond market, the interest rate on the 10-year German bond fell to 2.468%. Bitcoin, the most well-known and widely used cryptocurrency on the market, fell 1.13% to 104,816 dollars.
Macroeconomically, attention today will focus on the preliminary consumer confidence survey from the University of Michigan in the US, which may improve due to recent progress in trade negotiations with China. In Europe, Spain’s inflation data for May was revised to 2%, a tenth above the figure released two weeks ago and two tenths below April’s value, while food inflation rose by five tenths to 2.5%. In France, the annual CPI fell by one-tenth in May to 0.7%.
