[MARKET ANALYSIS] European bourses most lower, with Luxury hit after Richemont earnings

• European bourses (STOXX 600 -0.2%) are broadly on the backfoot this morning, conforming to the mostly subdued action seen in the APAC session. Focus remains on the AI situation, following Huang’s resignation from Nvidia, with major tech names such as SK Hynix (-3%) and Samsung Electronics (-1%) falling in Korean trade. Over in China, the magnitudes are to a larger extent, with woes growing about the US potentially slapping China with more stringent chip-related bans. The likes of Tencent (-3%) slipped overnight, whilst smaller companies such as MiniMax (-8%) were also hit.
• European sectors are mixed. Energy tops the pile, with oil prices a little firmer today; Optimised Personal Care and Food Beverage & Tobacco complete the top three. To the downside resides Consumer Products (hit by Richemont post-earnings), whilst Basic Resources is pressured by the selling in underlying metals.
• Key Movers: Richemont (-6.9%, sales rose Y/Y but gold costs weighed on underlying gross margin), Generali (-1.3%, reported EUR 1.5bln disaster hit), Acciona (-6%, lifted 2026 EBITDA outlook but asset rotation missed target. Elsewhere, Bloomberg reported that its USD 1bln Mexico infrastructure deal is seen at risk).
• US equity futures are entirely in the red, following the sentiment set out in Europe. The NQ (-0.4%) remains the slight underperformer this morning vs ES (-0.1%), with focus still on the fallout from Huang’s resignation from Nvidia. However, shares are currently firmer by c. 1% in pre-market trade, finding some reprieve after recent selling pressure. Attention ahead will turn back to monetary policy with US PPI scheduled, and also a few Fed speakers.

A session of this shape, where an AI-linked catalyst hits Asian semis overnight and the selling sequence runs Korea, then China, then European tech and US futures, is the established transmission pattern for sector-specific risk rather than broad macro repricing; the tell for whether it broadens is whether defensives and energy keep outperforming while cyclicals absorb the damage, as they are here. The Richemont read is the more conventional kind of event: a top-line beat undone by input-cost compression on gross margin, in this case gold, and luxury peers have historically traded as a basket on such prints, so the Consumer Products sector move is the read-through rather than the single stock. Acciona is the idiosyncratic case, an outlook raise overridden by a missed disposals target and deal-risk reporting, the sort of combination that tends to reprice infrastructure names on balance-sheet execution rather than operations. The day's remaining catalysts are US PPI and the scheduled Fed speakers, and in prior episodes where equities were already on the backfoot an in-line print has tended to matter less than the tone of the commentary around it. The distinction worth drawing is between a tech-led wobble that stays contained in the NQ-ES spread and one that migrates into credit and rates; so far the price action described sits in the former camp.