There's something wrong with corporate results

As expected, the European central bank left its rates unchanged yesterday, citing a decline in inflation and cooling economic activity. Corporate results were rather weak. The FTSE 100 dropped 0.8%.

Investors are on edge. When Siemens Energy, Compagnie Plastic Omnium and Standard Chartered are losing 34%, 23% and 12% respectively, something is wrong on stock markets. The previous day, Worldline was down 59%. Even the invincible stocks aren't necessarily doing well any more: Alphabet lost 9.5% on Wednesday, while Meta lost 9% in two days.

I haven't yet got my hands on FactSet's latest weekly analysis on corporate results, but I do have the impression that downward revisions to targets are piling up at a much higher rate than usual. This is most obvious in Europe.

Shares of Standard Chartered tumbled 12.8% on Thursday, after the lender posted a 33% drop in pre-tax profit in the third quarter.

And today NatWest shares dropped 10% after it lowered its margin guidance today.

Reckitt Benckiser is also down, by 0.9%, after analysts at Berenberg downgraded the stock.

Things to read today:

Why is the US economy so resilient? (Financial Times)

Tesco Could Do With Aldi’s Low-Price Recipe (Bloomberg)

The Five Main Drivers of Global Economic Uncertainty (Project Syndicate)