MILAN: European stocks broke a four-day winning streak on Thursday as ex-dividend trading and a stronger pound hit the UK's blue-chip companies, while investors sold off banks and energy stocks that have outperformed this week.
The pan-European STOXX 600 closed 0.6% lower, with London's FTSE 100 sliding 1.5% as a jump in the pound hurt exporters on the index, while heavyweights like AstraZeneca, BP, and GlaxoSmithKline traded without entitlement to a dividend payout, hitting their shares.
Reversing a recent trend, investors favoured pockets of markets that have remained resilient in the wake of the coronavirus crisis such as the technology sector. On Wall Street, Apple was set to record $2 trillion in market capitalisation.
That left some of the cyclical sectors that are more exposed to an economic downturn, such as banks, oil & gas, miners and automakers, falling between 0.8% and 1.9%. Weak earnings also dented the mood, with struggling conglomerate Thyssenkrupp plunging 16.3% after it said its steel unit would rack up 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) in operating losses this year, raising pressure to fix or sell the division.
TUI, the world's largest tourism company, fell 6.2% as it sank to a 1.1 billion euro ($1.30 billion) loss in the third quarter due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Danish brewer Carlsberg slid 5.8% on a warning that lockdowns will impact sales in the second half of the year in its key markets of China and Western Europe. The European blue-chip index is still about 15% below its February peak, but the pace of recovery for both from a market crash in March has been similar.
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