European stocks finish lower on Friday after week long rally while Fitch removes French AAA rating European shares finished lower on Friday after they had posted four days of successive gains earlier in the week. The move came after weaker than expected data was released from the euro zone which is showing that its economic recovery is still in rocky waters. Ratings agency Fitch on Friday downgraded France from the top AAA rating to AA+ citing a heavier government debt load and poor prospects for growth. Forecasts show that the French economy will contract by 0.3 percent in 2013. France is the second country this month to be downgraded by one of the top three raters after Italy was yet again reduced by Standard and Poors last week. Confidence for the euro zone recovery is dimming as major governments continue to struggle tackling current debt situations. Citigroup to release Q2 earnings for 2013 Citigroup are set to release their Q2 earnings for 2013 before the US market opens today. The results are a continuation on the earnings season which started last week and has already seen a number of big companies show better than expected results. JP Morgan on Friday released earnings, which were substantially better than expected for their second quarter results in both profits and revenue. However, JP Morgan share price closed lower as investors seemed to have already priced in this result in prior trading. This will be a key factor as investors anticipate potential results for Citi. The consensus on expected profit per share is an EPS of $1.18. Anything higher than this and you could see Citigroup follow suit with JP Morgan in posting better than expected profits making it a strong start for the banking sector in Q2 2013. US shares continue to rally on good data and start to earnings season Stocks lost some of the gains on Friday after some very choppy trading on the day but major averages rallied strong for week. S&P 500 and the NASDAQ posted their second best weekly gains for the year so far while the Dow Jones closed at a new all time high of 15,464.30. This was helped by a good start to Q2 earnings led by the banking sector. US retail sales are set to be released today which could have a strong impact on the direction of the US markets and USD. Analysts are expecting an increase on the month on month figure from a previous of 0.6% change to 0.8% consensus. If the actual continues to beat expectations the positive data may boost the sentiment of US economic conditions DrJoe
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 09:47:17 +0000
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