Investor relations blog

COOLING DOWN

What a hot start to the week it was! Sunglasses, flip flops and shorts were taken out of storage and parks were full of people enjoying the sun, taking boat rides on lakes or barbecuing…What may have been an ordinary scene in August was most definitely out of the ordinary for a mid-October weekend in Belgium.  With over 25 degrees reported in Brussels on Saturday and almost 24 degrees on Sunday, temperatures broke a century record – hottest days for this time of the year since 1901, the year in which meteorological data was first  recorded – before slowly receding over the week and returning to still warm but more normal levels.

The same cooling effect was observed last week in the financial markets which calmed down and returned to normalcy after a previous heated week of market turbulence and heavy equities sell-off. While the trading week started on a clearly negative note with the Stoxx 600 hitting a 22-month low on Monday, European equities bounced back on Tuesday and clawed back some of the previous sharp losses.

Signs of nervousness still persisted in the market over the course of the week due to the ongoing trade war between the United-States and China, concerns over possible further interest rate rises by the Fed and tensions over Italy’s budget which pushed the spread between Italian and German 10-year bond yields to its highest level in five years. But overall, European markets ended the week in the green with the Stoxx 600 gaining 0.6%.

For Ageas, whose closed period started on Monday ahead of the publication of the nine months results on Wednesday 14 November, the share recovered even more strongly and closed the trading week up 2.9%, compared to an increase limited to 0.4% for the Stoxx 600 Insurance.