A balcony above a trading floor inside the Euronext NV stock exchange in Paris, France, on Monday, March 13, 2023.
Nathan Laine | Bloomberg | Getty Images
LONDON — European markets closed higher Friday, rounding off what’s set to be a winning week for global stocks.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 index closed up 0.31%, to record a weekly gain of 2.4%. Autos stocks recorded the biggest sectoral gain, adding 1.06%, while oil and gas stocks lost 0.15%.
The Stoxx 600 and Wall Street’s S&P 500 remain shy of the levels they started the month at, but steady gains through the week have recuperated losses from the recent rout.
On the data front on Friday, U.K. retail sales showed a rebound from a 0.9% decline in June to 0.5% growth in July, in line with expectations in a Reuters poll. Sales volumes were up 1.1% in the three months to July.
Alex Kerr, U.K. economist at Capital Economics, said in a note Friday that the retail uptick was not broad-based, with sectors such as food, clothing and household goods struggling.
“We continue to think that rising real incomes, as inflation falls, should mean consumer spending growth accelerates over the rest of this year,” Kerr said.
