Before the bell: autumn rally paints markets green

BNP Paribas convicted in the U.S., CATL charges ahead with record profits, and Japan’s first female prime minister lifts Tokyo stocks.

It may be autumn, but stock markets are still glowing spring green. The average European stock rose 1.3% yesterday, while the Bel20 did slightly better with a 1.4% gain. All twenty stocks in Brussels’ flagship index ended the day higher, led by Umicore (+3.9%), Azelis (+3.6%), and Argenx (+2.6%). In the United States, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq gained 1.1% and 1.4%, respectively. Early sales figures for the iPhone 17 pushed Apple (+4%) to a new record high. Several websites, apps, and systems — including those of Starbucks, Lyft, and OpenAI — briefly went offline after an outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS), but everything has since been restored. Cooper Companies (+4.2%) rose after activist fund Jana Partners disclosed a stake in the firm. Investors are betting the activist will push for a merger of Cooper’s contact lens division with that of its Canadian rival Bausch + Lomb.

In Asia, the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong climbed 1.6% this morning. In Japan, investors celebrated the appointment of Sanae Takaichi as the country’s first female prime minister, sending the Nikkei and Topix up 0.5% and 0.3%, respectively. The rally puts the Nikkei within reach of the symbolic 50,000-point milestone. In France, L’Oréal reports earnings today, while later in the U.S., we’ll see results from Coca-Cola, Philip Morris, Lockheed Martin, RTX, 3M, Netflix, Mattel, and Intuitive Surgical.

Genocide verdict hits BNP Paribas

BNP Paribas plunged 7.7% in Paris trading after being found guilty in the U.S. for its alleged role in the genocide in Sudan. Three Sudanese refugees had filed a lawsuit in the United States, accusing the bank of providing financial services to Omar al-Bashir’s regime despite international sanctions. The U.S. court ruled in favor of the refugees, saying the bank had indirectly enabled the regime’s actions during the genocide. The verdict opens the door to multi-billion-euro damages claims. The Belgian government, which owns 5.7% of BNP Paribas, saw its stake lose value as the bank’s market capitalization fell by more than 6 billion euro.

CATL powers up

Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) reported a 41% increase in third-quarter profit, reaching 18.5 billion yuan (2.2 billion euro). The company is the global leader in electric vehicle batteries — nearly 37% of all EVs worldwide use a CATL battery. Its biggest competitor is Chinese automaker BYD, which produces its own batteries. CATL’s future growth will depend heavily on EV sales outside China. The company is building a new factory in Hungary, where production is set to begin by late this year or early 2026. That said, there are concerns as European carmakers delay their electrification plans. So far, however, there’s little evidence of that in CATL’s numbers. The stock gained 4.3% this morning on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where it has been listed since May this year.

Did you know…

that Herbert Diess, the former Volkswagen CEO, was the one who persuaded Robin Zeng, the founder of CATL, to start producing batteries for electric vehicles back in 2010, when Diess was still at BMW? BMW also became CATL’s first customer. The company originated from ATL, one of Apple’s battery suppliers, which specialized in making batteries for mobile phones.

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