Wall Street’s broader stock market struggled to make headway, but tech shares kept climbing globally as Amazon’s $38 billion (€32.93 billion) deal with OpenAI added fuel to the artificial-intelligence trade.
European shares gained at the start of a busy week for corporate earnings.
Dublin
The Iseq outperformed its European peers, advancing by more than 1 per cent.
RM Block
Ryanair buoyed the index, adding almost 4 per cent to close at €27.29 per share after reporting a record performance in its second financial quarter.
The airline said profits rose 42 per cent to €2.54 billion in the six months to the end of September. The airline also announced a dividend of 19.3 cent a share, which will be paid to shareholders in February.
Banks also logged strong performances as PTSB jumped a further 4.8 per cent to €3.03 following the announcement of its sale process last week. AIB moved 0.4 per cent higher to €8.01 per share and Bank of Ireland jumped by 0.5 per cent to €14.25.
Cairn Homes added 0.7 per cent to close at €1.94 per share after announcing a contract with the State’s Housing Agency to deliver 332 apartments in Clonburris, Dublin.
Glenveagh, its rival home builder, dipped 0.8 per cent, meanwhile.
London
UK stocks finished lower again on Monday, extending their fall from the previous two sessions as markets cooled further.
At the start of a busy week on the earnings front and with a Bank of England interest rates decision due on Thursday, the benchmark FTSE 100 index slid 0.2 per cent while the mid-cap FTSE 250 dipped 0.4 per cent.
The central bank is expected to keep rates unchanged, pausing its cycle of cuts for the first time since it started easing policy last year
Financials, including life insurers and banks, were the biggest boosts, with insurer Prudential up 1.7 per cent and top lender HSBC climbing 0.4 per cent. Barclays and NatWest Group were little changed.
Industrial miners and oil majors were among the laggards. Fresnillo lost 0.7 per cent after the gold miner said it has agreed to buy Canada’s Probe Gold in cash, marking its expansion into North American markets.
Heavyweights AstraZeneca and BP, as well as Guinness-owner Diageo, will report earnings this week.
Europe
European share indices edged higher as investors digested a fresh round of earnings reports and auto stocks gained.
The blue-chip Stoxx 50 index finished up 0.3 per cent, while the cross-Continental Stoxx 600 added less than 0.1. per cent.
Car-makers were among the biggest gainers amid fresh optimism that Dutch chipmaker Nexperia’s China plants will resume shipments.
Volkswagen added 2.3 per cent, Mercedes-Benz jumped 1.9 per cent, while BMW and Stellantis advanced by around 1 per cent.
Meanwhile, Campari slid 2 per cent after Italian tax police said they had worth €1.29 billion from a Luxembourg-based holding company that controls the Italian drinks group over alleged tax evasion.
New York
On Wall Street, news of Amazon’s mega-deal with OpenAI propelled a gauge of the so-called Magnificent Seven stocks up 1.5 per cent.
Amazon jumped 4.5 per cent as its cloud unit will provide the ChatGPT maker with access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics processing units as part of a seven-year deal.
Still, more than 400 shares in the S&P 500 retreated as the recent broad-based rally faded.
Kenvue jumped 17.4 per cent after Kimberly-Clark said it will acquire the Tylenol maker in a deal valued at more than $40 billion (€34.7 billion). Kimberly-Clark slid 11.8 per cent.
Palantir Technologies, whose stock has surged about 385 per cent over the past year amid AI optimism, will report earnings after the closing bell.
Semiconductor firm Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm are also due to report this week, along with Uber and fast-food chain McDonald’s. – Additional reporting: Bloomberg, Reuters
