French stocks were moving lower on Friday, with sentiment jolted by a surge in speculative trading from retail investors organized over online forums, such as Reddit.
Hedge funds and other large investors that bet against GameStop have lost more than $5bn after a cohort of amateur investors joined forces to inflate the price of shares in the U.S. video game chain, according to data analytics company S3.
Lingering concerns over tight liquidity in China, weak U.S. data released overnight, rising Covid-19 cases and the slow and chaotic nature of the bloc’s vaccination rollout also rattled investors.
The benchmark CAC 40 index fell 56 points, or 1 percent, to 5,454 after gaining 0.9 percent in the previous session.
In economic news, the French economy contracted less-than-expected in the fourth quarter as the impact of the recent curfews and restrictions related to Covid-19 pandemic was less severe than the first lockdown put in place during the March to May period, preliminary data from the statistical office Insee showed.
Gross domestic product fell 1.3 percent sequentially, in contrast to an 18.5 percent rise in the third quarter. Economists had forecast a quarterly decline of 4 percent.
Another report from the statistical office Insee showed that household spending rebounded sharply in December on higher consumption of manufactured goods.
Household spending surged 23 percent in December from November, when consumption was down 18 percent due to the second lockdown.
Market Analysis
CAC 40 Slips On Concerns Over Retail Trading Frenzy
2021-01-29 09:16:54
