August Blues
Often considered as one of the greatest poems ever written in the English language and a masterpiece of modern literature, the 1922 ‘The Waste Land’ poem by British American poet T.S. Elliot, states that “April is the cruelest month”. Although some American investors indeed consider April as the ‘cruelest’ month as in the US, the month of April is typically a tax month, people often argue that August is actually the ‘cruelest’ month with people ‘suffering’ from so called August blues. August blues is this feeling of anxiety and ‘panic’ summer-lovers experience when summer is coming to a close with the transition from summer fun back into the school year. Sort of like the Sunday night blues (feeling that one has when the weekend is coming to a close) for a month if you will.
August blues unfortunately kicked in on the European trading floor this trading week with again macro issues and headlines around trade negotiations receiving most of the European equity investors’ attention. With the end of summer holidays, combined with the UK bank holiday on Monday keeping market volumes relatively low, at the beginning of last trading week European shares rallied following the trade agreement reached between the United States and Mexico. However, as the trading week progressed, some European investors started to experience the August blues. European shares fell back as optimism triggered by the U.S./Mexico trade deal gradually fizzled out and uncertainty grew about a lasting solution to the US trade tension with China. Since the start of the year, equity investors have clearly been favouring the US, with new all-time highs set for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq this trading week. So far in 2018 the US is the only market trending up while Europe has experienced a great deal of volatility since March, and emerging markets have been trending downwards all year.
No August blues for Ageas though as last trading week the Ageas share closed at EUR 44.58 (-0.2%) outperforming the Eurostoxx 50 (-1.0%). Since the beginning of the year the Ageas share has risen 9.5% outperforming both the Eurostoxx 50 (-3.2%) and the SXIP 600 Insurance index (-2.9%) making the Ageas share price performance thus far, in 2018, one of the best performers compared to other listed European insurance companies.