European shares on Friday staged a late-day turnaround after upbeat earnings and a rise in oil stocks helped the main STOXX 600 index shrug off bleak eurozone data and a fall in bank stocks, while London’s FTSE 100 closed on firmer ground.
The STOXX 600 gained 0.56 percent to close at 466.64, down 0.5 percent for the week, but up 1.92 percent for the month, driven by earnings following a turbulent last month after the collapse of two US regional lenders and the Swiss state-sponsored rescue of Credit Suisse.
“The month is going out with some small upside for stocks, after a week in which earnings provided fresh good news,” said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at online trading platform IG.
“But the first week of the new month will be equally as busy as the one just finished, with more big names reporting plus rate decisions and job numbers. There are still plenty of potential hurdles to any further gains in stocks,” he said.
Defensive sectors such as real-estate and healthcare, rose 5.2 percent and 4.7 percent respectively, outpacing major European sectors for the month. Tech and miners were the top two monthly decliners, down 4.7 percent and 5.6 percent.
The blue-chip FTSE 100 closed up 0.5 percent at 7,870.57, but was down 0.55 percent for the week, while the mid-cap FTSE 250 closed 0.92 percent higher at 19,425.14, and ended the week up by 0.81 percent.
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The FTSE 100 rose 3.13 percent for the month and the domestically focused FTSE 250 closed 2.62 percent higher, as investors returned to markets following March’s sharp selloff.
British bank NatWest Group PLC reported it beat quarterly earnings, but said that deposits fell by about ￡20 billion (US$24.98 billion), sending its shares down 3.7 percent to a more than one-month low.
The broader banking sector lost 0.8 percent.
“A drop in customer deposits, while nothing like on the scale seen at other crisis-ridden banks, has helped put the wind up investors in NatWest,” said AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.
“NatWest has to work hard to earn the trust of the market and updates like today’s do not help,” he said.
Stocks fell earlier in the day after preliminary data showed the eurozone grew only marginally in the first three months of the year, and at a rate lower than market expectations after stagnation at the end of last year.
“Data released on Friday confirmed that the euro-zone economy was broadly stagnant in Q4 and Q1,” Capital Economics deputy chief eurozone economist Jack Allen-Reynolds wrote in a note.
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