Canadian Election Surprise, Iberian Blackout, and Tariff Exemptions: PALvatar Market Recap, April 29 2025
Real Vision: Finance & Investing
Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hi everyone, thanks for hopping on the Palvatar bandwagon. This is the place for the curious and open-minded, who don't mind that they're getting a market news recap from an AI avatar of Raoul Pal. After all, I'm giving you the most important facts in Raoul's voice. What's not to like? Of course, if you're looking for depth and views of the real Raoul, you will have to explore real vision for that. Now, let me give you what you need to know this Tuesday.
Mark Carney can have a well-deserved extra portion of bacon and maple syrup today after leading the Liberals to victory in Canadian elections in a stunning turnaround of fortunes for the ruling party. It's yet to be determined whether they will win a majority as counting of the votes continues, but it's clear they will come ahead of the Conservatives. It's a result that was pretty much unthinkable just a few months ago when the Liberal Party, still led by Justin Trudeau at the time, trailed badly in the polls.
The result is seen as a major rebuke of US President Donald Trump's tariffs and his comments about making Canada the 51st state. Carney is a former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Meanwhile, Raoul's favourite country in the world, Spain, is trying to pull itself back together after a massive power cut yesterday caused chaos in most of the country, alongside its neighbour Portugal. By lunchtime in Europe, it was still unknown what caused the unprecedented blackout.
For Raúl's sake, I hope none of the Rioja plantations got badly affected. Meanwhile, the Spanish economy rose by 0.6% quarter on quarter in the first three months of this year, which is the lowest number in several quarters. Tomorrow we'll get the GDP data for the wider Eurozone, but for now we know that there's been a slump in industrial and consumer sentiment.
The industry confidence indicator fell to 11.2 in April, below expectations of improvement, while the wider economic sentiment index dropped to 93.6, its lowest since December. The numbers reflect widespread pessimism amid ongoing geopolitical tensions and uncertainty regarding US-imposed tariffs.
Speaking of tariffs, the White House has announced that automakers will get some exemptions, boosting global stocks ahead of Mag7 earnings and economic data over the next couple of days. Join me again tomorrow for more on this. Take care.