Goldman Sachs shares sell-off was overdone
UK AND EUROPEAN stock markets are expected to recover some of Friday’s Goldman Sachs-inspired losses on the open this morning.
Whilst the markets are still digesting the implications of the SEC fraud charges, our call is that Friday’s knee-jerk sell-off was overdone – exagerrated by profit-taking following a winning streak for the Dow of six consecutive sessions.
ELEVEN DOW COMPANIES REPORTING
GFT is quoting the FTSE 100 index to open up 20 points from Friday’s close, at a level of 5,763.
The German DAX is also expected to start higher, up 18 points at 6,198, and the French CAC is forecast to open up 10 points at 3,996.
Eleven Dow companies post their first-quarter earnings results this week, including Citigroup this afternoon – zero profit is expected versus an 18 cents per share loss for the same period last year.
IBM is also expected to report after the close today. Also expect particular attention to be paid to Yahoo tomorrow and Morgan Stanley on Wednesday.
In the UK, uncertainty over the upcoming election results is likely to continue to play a part with market direction, and Friday’s GDP figure – of which Gordon Brown will be aware when he takes part in the second televised debate the night before – could potentially add to uncertainty by giving Labour a boost, with the data expected to show first quarter growth of 0.4 per cent.
Martin Slaney is director of global dealing operations at GFT.