The balcony above the Euronext trading floor on Monday, March 13, 2023 in Paris, France.
Nathan Lane | Bloomberg | Getty Images
LONDON — European stocks were higher on Friday, capping a positive week for global stocks.
Pan-European Stoke 600 At 8:38 a.m. London time, the index rose 0.2%, with auto stocks rising 1.1%.
The regional benchmark has gained more than 2% so far this week and is expected to post its best performance since May 10.
US stocks Stocks also posted strong gains on Thursday when weekly jobless claims fell and U.S. retail sales data was released. stronger More than forecasts suggest.
This further demonstrates to investors that people are interested in U.S. economic recessionwhich contributed to Sharp global sell-off At the beginning of the month, everything is exaggerated. together with The knock-on effects of Japan’s monetary policyanalysts said some of the volatility may be due to August Historical Trendstrade is often shallow at this time.
Stoxx 600 and Wall Street S&P 500 Index Still below levels seen at the start of the month, but steady gains this week have more than made up for the recent plunge.
In terms of data on Friday, UK retail sales rebounded to a 0.5% increase in July from a 0.9% decline in June, in line with expectations in a Reuters poll. Sales grew 1.1% in the three months to July.
Alex Kerr, U.K. economist at Capital Economics, said in a note on Friday that retail growth was not broad-based, with sectors such as food, clothing and homewares struggling.
“We continue to believe that rising real incomes as inflation declines should mean that growth in consumer spending will accelerate over the remainder of the year,” Kerr said.
