European stocks are trading flat on the second last trading day of this year. Investors seem to be less enthusiastic about the Brexit trade deal today. However, this isn’t to say that they aren’t optimistic anymore.
The Brexit trade deal is the best thing that has happened to the U.K., and there is no doubt that once the country has the coronavirus situation under control, the economic growth will be mammoth. There will also be a strong reflection of this in the FTSE 100 index’s performance, which is clearly the laggard index among other European indices.
The U.S. futures are trading higher but not by a huge margin as the major US indices broke their five consecutive days of gains. There was no doubt that the U.S. stock indices went too far and too fast, and a correction was imminent. The Dow Jones futures pierced the upper line of the Bollinger band, but now the price has moved within the Bollinger, which means that the Dow price is less volatile, for now.
Also, in Washington, lawmakers refused to give the green light to Donald Trump’s wish for a stimulus check. Trump wanted to increase the direct stimulus cheque to $2,000. The bill was passed in the House, but the request fell on dead ears in Senate; it refused to agree with Trump.
It doesn’t really matter too much for investors as they have been over the moon on the back of news that there is still plenty of fiscal support for the U.S. economy. As long as the U.S. lawmakers continue to show their support for the U.S. economy, there are stronger chances of robust economic recovery in the U.S.
On the Covid-19 front, Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine finally got the green light from lawmakers today. This is certainly good news because there is no doubt that the current coronavirus vaccine demand is nowhere close enough to supply. Another major company getting its vaccine approved by the lawmakers will further improve the coronavirus situation as the number of Covid cases is ticking higher over in Europe and in the U.S. The U.S. is logging nearly 189,905 new coronavirus cases daily now, and more than 2,000 people are losing their lives every day.
Over in China, the GDP growth for 2019 was revised lower to 6.0% against the previous reading of 6.1%. Clearly, the difference isn’t groundbreaking, but it impacted the sentiment among traders and stock traders. Nonetheless, the Asian indices maintained their gains across the board. The Shanghai index advanced 0.96%, the HSI surged 1.53 wile KOSPI index moved higher by 1.88% at the time of writing this report.