The Ibex 35 falls 1.53% after the Fed’s decision and marks four-week lows

MADRID Dec. 19 () –

The Ibex 35 closed this Thursday with a fall of 1.53%, reaching 11,439.9 points – the lowest of mid-November – following the decision announced yesterday by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) to lower the rates for the third time since 2020.

Specifically, the Fed decided this Wednesday – with the European market already closed – to lower interest rates by 25 basis points, leaving them within the target range of 4.25% to 4.5%. In addition, the president of the central bank, Jerome Powell, warned that the pace of interest rate cuts will be slower in 2025 given the latest inflation readings and forecasts that indicate that prices will be higher than anticipated.

Renta 4 analysts have highlighted that the Fed conveyed a “more hawkish tone than expected” by the market, which led to a rise in the yield of US bonds and falls in the country’s stock market indicators.

“We already warned that the ‘dot plot’ presented in September had a somewhat ‘dovish’ bias, especially in a context of resilience of the American cycle and additional upward pressures on inflation due to the planned policies of the Trump government,” the experts explained. .

In short, they have indicated that the Fed will continue to pursue its dual mandate (price stability, until inflation is at 2%, and maintaining full employment) so the next movements in its monetary policy will continue to be “data-dependent.” . “But in a scenario of solid growth, robust labor market and higher inflation, Powell will be more cautious with future cuts,” they reasoned.

In this way, the market has already eliminated any probability that the Fed will cut another 25 basis points in January. At the next meeting, in March, the economic policy scenario of President-elect Donald Trump “should be clearer”, which would give greater visibility on the evolution of rates.

This Thursday, other decisions on rates by central banks stood out: on the one hand, the Bank of Japan has decided to keep its monetary policy stable and continue setting the reference interest rate for overnight loans without guarantee around 0.25%.

The Bank of Norway has also decided to maintain them, in this case, at 4.5%, while the Bank of Sweden has announced a cut of 0.25 points, bringing them to 2.5%. Likewise, the Bank of England has kept rates at 4.75%, as the market expected.

Another macroeconomic reference today was that the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States experienced an increase of 0.8% in the third quarter compared to the previous three months, when the world’s largest economy grew seven tenths, according to The Office of Economic Analysis of the Department of Commerce has reported on third reading.

Given this situation, within the Ibex 35, only four stocks have managed to close with a positive sign: Bankinter (+0.81%), Unicaja (+0.56%), Logista (+0.49%) and CaixaBank ( +0.04%).

In the voluminous section of losses, the declines in Merlín (-3.13%), Fluidra (-2.95%), Colonial (-2.92%), Cellnex (-2.66%), Solaria stood out. (-2.5%), Banco Santander (-2.37%), Puig (-2.34%), Sacyr (-2.31%) and BBVA (-1.95%).

At the national level, the Congress of Deputies has definitively approved the tax reform, with the banking tax, but without the energy tax.

Considerable discounts have been the common denominator among the reference European places: London has subtracted 1.14%; Paris 1.22%; Frankfurt 1.35% and Milan 1.78%. In contrast, Wall Street indices advanced around 0.5% during the afternoon.

On the other hand, the price of a barrel of Brent quality oil, a reference for the Old Continent, stood at 72.9 dollars at closing time in Europe, 0.7% less, while that of Texas depreciated by 0.8%, up to $70.02.

In the currency market, the price of the euro against the dollar stood at 1.0364 ‘greenbacks’, 0.1% more, while in the debt market, the interest required on the 10-year bond has closed at 3.001% after adding almost seven basis points, with the risk premium with respect to the German bond at 70 points.

For its part, the troy ounce of gold rose by 0.26%, to $2,590, while bitcoin fell by 0.3% and was trading at around $101,000.