AEX price fell on the last trading day of January

The AEX price continues to fluctuate around the symbolic 1000-point limit. At the time of writing, the stock market index is trading below that level again. Wall Street had a hard time with the huge 12 percent drop in Microsoft’s share price, and that is now spreading to the rest of the world.

Hopes pinned on the oil industry

For today, investors are pinning their hopes on the oil industry. It seems that AI companies are putting on the brakes for a while, which means that ASML cannot take the lead on the AEX for a while.

At the same time, we saw the oil price rise sharply, so we hope that Shell can make a positive contribution to the AEX today. Yesterday the share already managed to rise 2.5 percent, but today we see a decline of almost 1 percent for the time being.

Later this afternoon, Exxon Mobil and Chevron will report quarterly figures. These are major players in the oil industry, which in theory can give Shell some positive momentum.

Red day for the financial markets

For the time being, however, it seems to be a red day on the financial markets. Bitcoin is once again having a hard time, gold and silver are correcting heavily, the American futures are turning red, and the AEX is also having a hard time.

This seems mainly to be the result of Microsoft’s poor figures, which caused a share price drop of 12 percent yesterday. Investors are taking their foot off the accelerator for a moment in a clear risk-off move on the financial markets.

That decline at Microsoft was the result of its heavy dependence on OpenAI. The loss-making operator of ChatGPT should generate a lot of revenue for Microsoft, but investors clearly have doubts about that.

This risk-off movement is such that even the safe havens that have performed well recently, gold and silver, have now entered more difficult waters. It will be interesting to see if the market can pick up positive momentum again after this wave of price declines.