By Rhod Mackenzie
On the second day of the fall in the Global stock and commodity markets following the downgrade of the US rating, oil showed its strength - Brent, having won back considerable losses on Wednesday, again soared above $85 per barrel. A few words from Saudi Arabia and Russia were enough for this.
Yesterday, the shock wave from Fitch's downgrade of the US rating, which blew up the perceptions of many investors and politicians about the world, circled the globe for the second time. Attempts to grow in the stock and commodity markets were made - sometimes even not without success - and yet many of these markets, even after positive corrections, continued to fall.
The majority of stock indexes in Asia again closed trading down: the Japanese Nikkei 225 lost 1.61%, the Hong Kong Hang Seng - 0.67%, the Indian BSE Sensex - 0.82%, the Thai SET - 1.37%. A number of exchanges in the region also closed the day in the red, but there were exceptions.
The most striking was the Chinese market, where most of the indices remained in the positive zone. Thus, the Chinese Shanghai Composite rose by 0.58%. Here, domestic news outweighed the external negative: a Caixin survey showed that the services sector in China grew faster in July than in June. Closed trading in positive territory and the markets of several other countries, including Kazakhstan and Indonesia.
In Europe, the picture is similar, except that among the exceptions against the backdrop of a broad-based decline, there was no place for a single large economy by analogy with China. The main stock indices were again in the red: the German DAX - by 0.79%, the French SPS 40 - by 0.72%, the British FTSE 100 - by 0.43% (the Bank of England rate hike did not fundamentally change the agenda), and the Italian FTSE MIB - by 1.3%.
The pan-European STOXX 600 lost 0.63%. Only Croatia, Malta, Cyprus and a few other countries remained in a small plus near zero.
The American market also closed the day in the red: the S&P 500 lost 0.25% following the results of trading. At the same time, the best in both indices were shares of the energy sector: in Europe they added 0.7%, and in the US - 0.95%. And this is no coincidence.
This article originally appeared in Russian at expert.ru