Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Stocks rally in Europe as relations thaw in Davos. Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Stuart Clarkson. Good morning. So, the world has been reacting to Donald Trump's announcement on an agreement for the future of Greenland. The President said the US will now not impose tariffs on eight NATO countries.
Here's how some people in Greenland have responded.
Very thrilled to hear that. First of all, because he has been saying a lot of stuff about taking Greenland with force, like he'll do it the hard way, which is so scary to hear.
You know, it doesn't feel like everything is over just because a statement like that is out. So I still feel like everything can happen.
Chapter 2: What was Donald Trump's announcement regarding Greenland?
So time will tell what happens.
That's what some Greenlanders think. What about the markets here in Europe this morning? We've seen rises of around 1% on the main indices. Let's talk to Fiona Sincotta, who's a senior analyst at Stonex. Hi, Fiona. Hello. Thanks for being with us on Marketplace. So talk us through how the markets in Europe have responded after what we heard yesterday.
Yeah, so we've seen a real change in sentiment. We've seen European markets have set off the day significantly stronger as risk sentiment returns and investors are more optimistic about the outlook as President Trump denounced that he will be withdrawing tariff threats.
So, you know, those concerns that had been over sort of potential impact to corporate earnings, to, you know, broader economic growth and to inflation are have all calmed down. And as a result, we're seeing investors buying into equities once again. And we're also seeing those safe havens, so that gold and silver coming off as investors feel more optimistic about the outlook.
Yeah, and I mean, obviously follows the drops when he threatened the tariffs. Why do markets react so much to comments from President Trump, given that so many times now, we've seen him make threats and then row back again?
That's right. The so-called taco trade, right? Trump always chickens out. It seems to be becoming a bit of a trend. I think the thing is with Trump is he's so unpredictable. It's always difficult to know whether he will actually go ahead with those threats or not. Obviously, if he does go ahead with those threats, such as trade tariffs,
These are big moves that he's threatening that would have a large impact on corporations' earnings, on global growth, on the inflation in several countries. So that's why the market is nervous when he makes those threats. But then we do see and we have been seeing this tendency for Trump to then rein in or row back on those threats. And then we see this recovery and a rebound in market sentiment.
Do you think that drop and rise will become a smaller thing the more this goes on?
I mean, there is a sense, right? If we think back to sort of Liberation Day, I mean, the move that we saw in the markets, obviously, that was a much larger scale than what we've seen from Trump just with the tariff threats on eight countries. But I think we are seeing a slightly lesser reaction as he sort of continually applies the same process.
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Chapter 3: How did the markets in Europe respond to Trump's tariff announcement?
Let's do the numbers now. And as Fiona mentioned, those safe havens have been doing well. Platinum hit a record high of just over $2,500 per ounce. Gold's up at $4,800 now with the latest forecast from Goldman Sachs, a target of $5,400 by the end of the year.
And the Chinese carmaker Geely, which owns Volvo, says it's targeting global sales of more than 6.5 million vehicles by 2030 with revenue of $143 billion. You might think of corporate bonds as relatively modern, but companies have actually been issuing them since at least the 17th century. The BBC's Rob Young's been taking a look at one of the oldest bonds still in existence.
Let me take you back to 1648. Picture this, a water company in the famously wet Netherlands needs cash to build a levee. It doesn't raise taxes, it borrows money by issuing bonds. And the IOU isn't written on paper, but on vellum, goat skin. Almost four centuries on, one of those original bonds survives and it's still collecting interest. The bondholder is Yale University in the United States.
Hi Geert, how are you doing? Very well, thank you.
Geert Roenhorst, a Dutch professor of finance at Yale, showed me his prized possession over a video link. It's history you can hold in your hands and proof that bonds aren't just about money. They contain stories that stretch across centuries.
It's a manuscript bond, which means it's sort of written on vellum, actually, at the time. And what's unusual about this bond is that it still pays interest.
Can you read what it says? The writing looks incredibly old.
It is old. And if you just looked at it first, it just looks like an old manuscript. Although I'm Dutch myself, it wouldn't occur to me at first look that this is actually a Dutch bond. The language itself was quite different from the way we sort of write and construct sentences today. So it is actually hard to read.
When we acquired the bond, I actually contacted somebody with the knowledge of medieval Dutch to kind of decipher what the bond was really about. It's an obligation to pay interest over the equivalent of 1,000 corollas guilders, which was the currency in the mid-17th century in the Netherlands.
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Chapter 4: Why do markets react to President Trump's comments on tariffs?
In the UK, I'm Stuart Clarkson with the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service.