End of the year with little change, but with a plus sign for the European markets. At +0.38%, Milan is doing little better than Frankfurt and Paris, London is slower at +0.14%, although with only half a day of trading. Another small step forward at the end of a very positive year in which Piazza Affari achieved the best performance among the major European stock exchanges. It is at its highest level since 2008, largely thanks to the banking and automotive sectors.
Instead, Wall Street opened flat, with the Dow Jones Index at -0.03% just below par and the Nasdaq just above at +0.07%. American indices, on the other hand, are at record levels, with the Dow Jones hitting an all-time high yesterday and the S&P500 set to reach it today. While the Nasdaq of technology stocks was the best index in the world at +44%, driven by the stocks of internet giants, from Google to Apple, from Meta to Amazon.
The focus is on the exchange rates: one euro is worth 1.1052 dollars. It is up 4.1% year-to-date thanks to increases in the last three months. The trend towards the Swiss franc is reversed. The euro is well below parity, down almost 6% since January.