Before the bell: ghosts on the US labour market

Brussels and Madrid rise against the trend. Will steelmaker ArcelorMittal be the surprise of 2026?

After a brief day of recovery, equities slipped back into the red. Frankfurt and Paris both lost 1.5%, while Madrid (+0.1%) and Brussels (+0.5%) went against the tide. Just before European markets closed, Wall Street rolled over, dragging European indices to their intraday lows. The Nasdaq dropped 1.9% and the S&P 500 slid 1.1%. Bubble fears resurfaced, as they do almost daily now, but the real story was the US labour market: October was the worst month for job losses in twenty years. Weak consumer demand played a role, but so did companies replacing staff with AI tools. Tech stocks — ironically — were hit hardest: Nvidia (-3.8%), Salesforce (-5.3%), Microsoft (-2%) and Tesla (-3.5%) all dropped. Elon Musk did, however, get shareholder approval for his mind-boggling 1 trillion dollar compensation package. In Europe, several names were punished sharply: Lanxess (-12.3%), whose CEO used the results call to sound the alarm to politicians, Legrand (-12.2%), IMCD (-7.3%) and Diageo (-6.4%). In Brussels, Aedifica (+3.6%), VGP (+4.2%) and the unjustly overlooked Greek holding Viohalco (+6.3%) stood out.

Asia is following Wall Street lower, though less dramatically: Japan’s Topix fell 0.5% and the Hang Seng is down 1%. Mainland China barely reacted to weak October export and import data. As usual, the earnings train slows slightly on Friday, but in Brussels Proximus and stainless steel producer Aperam step into the spotlight.

Steelmaker thanks EU for import tariffs

ArcelorMittal gained 2.4% after reporting results broadly in line with last year’s third quarter. But what really pleased the group was the EU’s decision to cut steel import quotas and double tariffs from 25% to 50%. European steel mills are currently running at only 65% capacity — well below the 80-85% needed for profitability. With the new tariffs, the company — which has a major site in Ghent — believes 2026 will look much better. European EBITDA came in at 513 million euro out of 1.5 billion euro total. The share price hasn’t crossed 40 euro since 2013, but has already climbed from 20 euro at the end of 2024 to 33.30 euro now. In mid-2008, the stock peaked near 200 euro. A rerun of that era seems unlikely, but if the European economy rebounds while protectionist measures stay in place, there could still be pleasant surprises.

No answer from abroad

In the third quarter, domestic EBITDA at Proximus grew 1.8%, while foreign EBITDA fell a steep 25%. That perfectly sums up the company’s issue: Proximus Global, the division meant to drive international growth, is now dragging results down. Group EBITDA fell 17.3% and net profit halved. New CEO Stijn Bijnens had to admit the international business will shrink again next year. “A team is now working on a plan to return to growth by 2027.” The headwinds are twofold: some international markets are structurally weakening, and Proximus has failed to provide stable leadership — key managers have been replaced repeatedly. All foreign operations are now grouped into a single division. For the full year, Bijnens still confirms 1% EBITDA growth for the group. The stock is priced for disaster, which means the troubled “Proximus Global” division is already largely discounted.

Did you know…

that October was an exceptionally strong month for ETFs, with 38 billion dollar in inflows — the second-best month ever? Bond ETFs were the big winners, while gold ETFs saw massive outflows. Strictly speaking, a gold ETF is actually an ETC (Exchange Traded Commodity), not an ETF.

This article was translated from Dutch and was originally published on Spaarvarkens.be.