- Title: French election relief sends Europe soaring
- Date: 24th April 2017
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK (APRIL 24, 2017) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF BGC PARTNERS, GLOBAL BROKERAGE COMPANY VARIOUS OF TRADERS (SOUNDBITE) (English) BGC PARTNERS, MARKET ANALYST, MIKE INGRAM SAYING: "I think the market had been increasingly concerned that this four horse race might have thrown up two potentially candidates in this context, that would have been Le Pen verses Melenchon. Of course in the event that didn't happen and that's one of the reasons why you are seeing a risk rally this morning. You are seeing the euro gain something like one and a half cents against the dollar. Gold has been sold. The premium that investors had demanded of French bonds over their bonds over bun counterparts has shrunk and European equities up this morning, up three to four percent." VARIOUS OF BGC PARTNERS/ TRADERS (SOUNDBITE) (English) BGC PARTNERS, MARKET ANALYST, MIKE INGRAM SAYING: "The political landscape has clearly shifted despite this market pleasing result today. And I think it would be a very, very brave person to forecast that prices of fragmentation has already reached its high water mark. I very much doubt that myself and I suspect that politics pan-Europe and perhaps also across the Atlantic are going to get messier still in the months or years ahead." VARIOUS OF BGC PARTNERS VARIOUS OF TRADERS (SOUNDBITE) (English) CITY INDEX, SENIOR MARKETS ANALYST, KATHLEEN BROOKS, SAYING: (On the rise in banking shares in morning trade) "There is expectation that European shares in particular are going to start outperforming their U.S. shares. Because they are considered a better valuation. So whenever there is excess trading activity or chances of volatility then we are tending to see bank shares start to rise. I think the other reason is that he is considered market friendly and the banks are the clear way to express that." VARIOUS OF BGC PARTNERS VARIOUS OF TRADERS (SOUNDBITE) (English) CITY INDEX, SENIOR MARKETS ANALYST, KATHLEEN BROOKS, SAYING: "He is essentially France's version of Obama. It's almost like Western politics as normal, the fact that he has got in. Obviously he has only won the first round and he still has quite a big fight on his hands in a couple of weeks’ time. However, I think the expectation now is that he is just going to walk this election and the markets are really saluting it. And that is because all of the other sort of centrist more conventional candidates who didn't make it through to the first round have actually thrown their weight behind him. Now if Marine Le Pen had got more than thirty percent in the first round she would have been a shoe-in for the Elysee palace. But the fact that she only managed about twenty one and a half percent really suggests that Emmanuel Macron can get, there are enough voters out there who can give him the key to the palace." VARIOUS OF BGC PARTNERS VARIOUS OF TRADERS (SOUNDBITE) (English) CITY INDEX, SENIOR MARKETS ANALYST, KATHLEEN BROOKS, SAYING: "Her economic policies, she's laid them all out and they are very to the right. But they are almost like a socialist version of the far-right if you see what I mean. So it's all the markets' fears in one. It’s shorter working weeks, a lower retirement age, much more spending when France is already in a lot of debt." VARIOUS OF BGC PARTNERS VARIOUS OF TRADERS
- Embargoed: 8th May 2017 10:30
- Keywords: markets France volatilitly election Le Pen Macron EU Europe investors
- Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK
- City: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK
- Country: France
- Topics: Economic Events
- Reuters ID: LVA0016DRD1N1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: European shares opened sharply higher and the euro briefly vaulted to five-month peaks on Monday (April 24) after the market's favoured candidate won the first round of the French election, reducing the risk of another Brexit-like shock.
The victory for pro-EU centrist Emmanuel Macron, who is now expected to beat right-wing rival Marine Le Pen in a deciding vote next month, sent the pan-European STOXX 50 index up 3 percent, France's CAC40 almost 4 percent and bank stocks more than 6 percent.
Traders top-sliced some of the euro's overnight gains, but it was still up more than 1 percent on the dollar, more than 2 percent against the yen EURJPY= and 1.3
There was also an unwinding of safe-haven trades.
Shorter-term German bonds saw their biggest sell-off since the end of 2015 as investors piled back into French as well as Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek debt.
The Japanese yen's fall was widespread, the market's so-called fear-gauge, the VIX volatility index, plunged the most since November and gold saw its biggest tumble in more than a month. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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