Stocks drifted lower on Wednesday, despite bets on further US stimulus driving most Asian stocks and US Future contracts higher overnight. Investors were pleased to see the US House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi maintaining her “hopes” of a compromise on the next stimulus plan before the end of the week. However, while this has helped to sustain market sentiment on a very short-term basis, most investors have already priced this into their trading with any failure to deliver the plan by the end of the week likely to trigger sharp moves down on riskier assets. European benchmarks are being weighed down by both the healthcare and energy sectors this morning with traders cautiously waiting for corporate news as well as the US Crude Oil Inventories data later in the afternoon. Today’s brings earning reports from TechnipFMC and Worldline as well as results from Verizon and Tesla in the US.
The FTSE-100 index is one of today’s worst performers so far after investors’ appetite decreased amid difficult Brexit talks with the EU that are now set to continue into next week at least if no agreement is reached between the two blocs before Friday.
