Good evening and welcome to Markets Desk.
European equities took a hard hit Thursday as Germany's DAX slid to a nine-week low, pressured by rising oil prices and climbing bond yields. Persistent geopolitical tensions are keeping energy costs elevated, and that inflation anxiety is feeding straight through to rate expectations and equity valuations across the continent.
Across the Atlantic, the bond market is telling a similar story. Thirty-year gilt yields in the United Kingdom have reached their highest level since nineteen ninety-eight, triggering a broad selloff in British equities. When long-duration yields push to generational highs, it reprices risk across every asset class, and investors are clearly rotating out of exposure they no longer feel compensated to hold.
On the portfolio management front, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square has exited its entire Alphabet position, redeploying that capital into Microsoft. Ackman is essentially making a concentrated bet that Microsoft's deeper integration of artificial intelligence into its core business gives it a structural edge, even as the stock sits roughly twenty percent below its peak. It's a high-conviction trade, and the market will be watching closely to see whether that discount represents value or a warning.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
