Daily Snapshot

It’s alright. We can stop panicking. The anxious wait is over. The “will they, wont they” fretting can come to an end. It’s been a long seven months but the Redburn Snacks Cupboard has been restocked. And not only that – they’re only #BuildingBackBetter. BBQ Beef Hula Hoops an absolutely stellar addition to the line up. Normality returning and anyone who has ventured back into their office this last couple of weeks will attest to busier streets and even the occasional queue for things.

Well well well – that’s a bit more like it. Finally something to actually write about! Bitcoin cratering -30% at one point the obvious place to start but I’m sure you’ll have seen plenty on that so lets look elsewhere for some interesting trends in EU equities that have emerged in the shakeout of the last 24 hours (Stoxx 600 -1.51% – all sectors down on the day). Banks the last major theme that we spotted and that worked well but we’re now very close to the 100 resistance level and it may well be time to look elsewhere for trends.

When the BBC runs one of its main stories as being the “shortage of 99 flakes hitting the UK” and it turns out that there actually isn’t a shortage and that the “surge in demand” isn’t expected to last you can tell it’s a slow news day. The awful scenes in Gaza and Israel aside this was another dot ball of a day as all the sectors that did well yesterday gave a bit back and all the sectors that wobbled yesterday regained their composure.

So there it is – we reach the third major landmark on the roadmap out of lockdown in the UK with pubs and restaurants allowed to serve people inside, overseas travel rules eased and social hugging back to being as uncomfortably awkward as it was before. Small steps but forward steps nonetheless as we continue to tiptoe along the path back to normality.

So we finish a tumultuous week only about 50 bps lower than where we started it (Stoxx 600 +1.19% to 442.53 vs last Friday’s close 444.93) but this remains a market that is very definitely not for the faint-hearted. The Banks again leading Europe better and that’s become a very well established theme albeit the SX7E not a million miles away from the 100 target now.

One of our former autos analysts wrote the definitive Buy note on Tesla a few years ago when they were trading significantly lower than where they are now. It was so good in fact that Elon Musk hired him to be….Head of IR at Tesla. That’s got to be a lively job hasn’t it? I mean an absolutely brilliant one obviously but one imagines there’s never a dull moment.

So I had my second jab today. It’s amazing how interested people are in which one you had – giving an approving nod when you tell them you were Pfizer – not dissimilar to a sommelier when you pick the right wine. And to be fair, so far so good. “Ah you’re feeling fine now – but with Pfizer it’s the next day that’s a nightmare” one of my clients kindly told me this afternoon. So that’s something to look forward to.

A House of Cards feel to the day as the FCA confirmed that they will formally investigate the Greensill Capital fiasco and a UK Parliamentary Committee raked through who knew what and when as David Cameron frantically whizzed through his rolodex trying to save his millions of pounds worth of options the firm back in March.

Well I didn’t want to go to Ibiza in May half term anyway. Sun, sea, sand? Who needs it? Far better to stay here and watch the market move +/- 50 bps every day. Today dominated by the Friday night announcement that the UK government were only really adding Portugal, Gibraltar and Israel as credible holiday destinations from next week. Some great points picked up by our Travel & Leisure team (not least that St Helena, Ascension and Tristan de Cunha are only accessible via a one week sail from South Africa which – erm – isn’t on the Green list).

Finger on the trigger then – who is booking where? Portugal? Spain? ‘Murica? Only the quickest of Snapshots tonight because at 5pm Transport Secretary Grant Shapps – the man once described by one of his colleagues as being “not someone you’d buy a used car off” – will be announcing where we can travel to and when. Ibiza for the May half term Grant – there’s a good lad. A rollercoaster end to a rollercoaster week as the Non-Farm Payrolls saw the usual whipsaw in markets but we end it with the Stoxx 600 having ground out another c1% gain.