Losing your wallet is bad enough, but having a winning lottery ticket purchased with your stolen credit card? Sounds like the kind of absurd headline you’d expect from a cartoon plot, but this is an actual story out of France over the weekend and has to be right up there with some of the worst luck I’ve heard in a while! Elsewhere in Europe, it was Germany which had much of today’s spotlight following yesterday’s election, with the DAX and MDAX rising 62bps and 1.5% to outperform broader Europe…

I met an avid reader of the Snapshot today who confirmed what I sort of already knew; it’s the first couple of sentences that make all the difference in the Snapshot. I know I’ve been slacking in that department but It’s hard; I’m getting far more boring as I get older, can’t remember the last time I wasn’t tired and have the social life of mealworm. Either way its always nice to hear it’s a go to – and naturally thanks to everyone here who contributes. A nothing day in Europe so to speak, a to…

I saw on my desktop today that the weather gave the signal of ‘High Pollen’. It didn’t exactly feel like it with my beanie and puffa jacket on this morning but combined with the small window of daylight that now greets us on the way out the office it is a sign that we’re getting close to the promised land of Spring….nothing really beats it in my books. No such spring in the European equity market step as we had a pause and the Stoxx 600 fell 91bps. It was our first pause for a while, so I don’t…

There was a lot of ‘out of office’ replies to yesterday’s Snapshot, no one laughed at my NII is the new AI (admittedly awful) joke and there have been multiple reports of half term being spent up one of the many snow-covered European mountains and I’m only just a little bit jealous of that. Today felt quite half-term-week-esq in plenty of ways too. European Equity markets sort of did what they have been used to doing of late in as such as Banks led the way (and feel unstoppable), Industrials so…

Lots of adulting from me this weekend with the highlight (it’s not really a highlight) getting a bunch of posters and pictures to the framing shop (I found one that wasn’t outrageously expensive too!) Up there with one of the most impossible tasks I’ve had in a while but having stared at me for a number of weeks (months) it was time for action. That sort of feels appropriate to the current situation within markets as having had Trump at the helm for nearly a month, we’re getting to what feels l…

“Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now!” did spring to mind earlier this morning, with European markets off to a blistering start as sentiment surrounding a possible Russia-Ukraine ceasefire picked-up on reports that Pres. Putin agreed in a phone call with Pres. Trump to begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. If that weren’t enough, a packed corporate earnings schedule gave us little time to breathe, and outsized moves from heavyweights Adyen +14% and Siemens +6% added further momentum behind today’s…

Our ever-popular midweek charts are always full of interesting revelations, and I was quite surprised earlier to learn that the Czech Republic consumes the highest volume of beer per capita in Europe. In all fairness, I’ve always thought that Budweiser Budvar is a stellar pint (nothing close to Guinness of course, and at roughly 69 CZK per glass, who could blame them? Moving from one surprise to the next, markets were caught off guard earlier as arguably the week’s main event caught markets off…

A bit of a quieter session earlier led me to the following article which includes a story about an unfortunate individual who is considering the purchase of an entire landfill site in an attempt to locate a hard drive containing thousands of Bitcoins that was disposed of back in 2013. An ambitious task for sure (“needle in a haystack” springs to mind), but I suppose you can’t really blame him given the run which the digital asset has had over the past twelve years! As mentioned, today’s session…

After two consecutive Mondays of major market-moving events, Trump’s tariffs on China last week and the widespread emergence of DeepSeek the week before, it did feel almost unusual starting this week on a quieter note. Weekend headlines shifted to sports, with the Six Nations in full swing and the 59th Super Bowl taking place in Louisiana. Never one to shy away from the spotlight, President Trump attended the latter, becoming the first sitting president to do so. However, his focus may have bee…

February has already been quite a long month just 3 days in. Trump is really getting going and its fairly tiring trying to keep up with it all. Earnings in Europe once again took the spotlight and outside of that the broader picture feels quite tentative. We’ve had a good start in 2025, consolidating a bit here and trying to find the next catalyst but it seemed the market was quite happy with that backdrop with the Stoxx 600 ending the day at the highs but only +50bps. A big theme that remains…