European shares bounced back on Friday, as stocks rebounded from prior losses and investors assessed a mixed bag of earnings from companies.
Dublin
The Irish market ended the week higher, closing at 13,295. That put the market up 0.7 per cent on the day and 1.2 per cent higher over the week.
Banking shares put in a good performance, with Bank of Ireland up almost 1.9 per cent and AIB rising 1.1 per cent. PTSB ended the week in positive territory, although its performance was less impressive with a 0.65 per cent gain.
Index heavyweight Glanbia gained 0.8 per cent to close at €16.76, while construction stocks also showed gains. Insulation specialist Kingspan was 2.8 per cent higher over the day, gaining 10 per cent since the start of the week. Home builders Glenveagh and Cairn also made gains over the session.
RM Block
At the other end of the market, Ryanair shed 0.85 per cent, closing the week at €28.02, while Kerry Group slipped 0.3 per cent by the end of the day.
London
London’s FTSE 100 ended higher on Friday after heavyweight lenders offset another slide in data analytics firm RELX, giving the index a positive finish to a week that had been marred by a tech sell-off.
The blue-chip index closed up 0.6 per cent, securing a second straight weekly gain, helped also by the Bank of England signalling on Thursday that interest rates could fall if the drop in inflation is sustained.
The domestically focused mid-cap FTSE 250 rose 0.5 per cent but still logged a second straight week of losses.
Business information group RELX slid 3.9 per cent, falling for a fourth straight week, while London Stock Exchange Group also fell 0.7 per cent, marking its third consecutive weekly decline.
But financial stocks, heavily weighted in the index, were up. Banks Lloyds, NatWest Group and Barclays rose between 0.9 per cent and 2.8 per cent.
London-listed miners rose; Fresnillo was up 3.1 per cent, among the top gainers of the benchmark index.
Next added 0.7 per cent after the fashion retailer said it has purchased British footwear brand Russell & Bromley through an insolvency process, paying £2.5 million.
Europe
The pan-European Stoxx 600 was up 0.9 per cent at 617.12 points.
Stellantis tanked 25.2 per cent, its biggest single-day drop on record and sent the broader auto sector index down 3 per cent.
Meanwhile, defence stocks were among top gainers with a 1.6 per cent rise. Norway’s Kongsberg jumped 15.6 per cent after reporting a bigger-than-expected rise in operating profit for the fourth quarter.
Banks, which had rallied for much of last year, were up 1.4 per cent on the day. Société Générale edged 2.2 per cent lower after the French lender reported a sharp drop in investment banking trading revenue.
Among individual movers, weight-loss drugmaker Novo Nordisk gained 5.3 per cent.
New York
The S&P 500 rose about 1.4 per cent on Friday, set for its biggest gain since November as software firms climbed.
An exchange-traded fund tracking software companies rose 2 per cent, while a gauge of chipmakers soared 4.5 per cent, with Nvidia leading the charge. Online retailer Amazon.com sank 8 per cent after vowing to spend $200 billion (€169 billion) on artificial intelligence (AI).
In an episode reminiscent of the response to DeepSeek’s AI model at the start of 2025, a new AI automation tool from Anthropic PBC sparked sell-off in shares across the software, financial services and asset-management sectors that spread to the broader market earlier this week.
About 400 shares in the S&P 500 gained. Its equal-weighted version – which strips out market value biases – hit all-time highs. While the Nasdaq 100 rose 1.3 per cent Friday, it was set for its worst week since November.
Bitcoin rallied almost 9 per cent, topping $68,000. That was after the largest meltdown since the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange that roiled the sector more than three years ago. – Additional reporting: Reuters, Bloomberg
