In the same week that rain and bad weather finally gave some respite to the national territory, the sun was also radiant in the countless companies that presented results.
At the same time that Trump is waving more tariffs, the war in Ukraine is heading into its fifth year and Europe still doesn’t know exactly which way it will turn in terms of investment for the coming decades. What do the markets tell us? That everything is fine and that we already “eat uncertainty for breakfast”, as the deputy director of DN, Nuno Vinha, rightly said, during a conversation in the newsroom these days.
Otherwise, let’s see: Millennium BCP? Record profits. EDP? Record profits. Caixa Geral de Depósitos? Record profits. Axa? Record profits. Allianz? Profits rise 8.5%. Indra Group? Profits soar 55%. Veolia? Profits advance more than 10%. Salesforce? Profits grow 20%.
In the markets, the state of euphoria is being counterbalanced by the natural corrections of the sessions that follow the results announcement days, but the scenario is encouraging. As, in fact, have mentioned the reports that try to predict how global economic activity will be in 2026 – the one from Coface, which we talk about in this edition, included. Entitled The Moment of Truththe annual report published by the credit insurer, and presented last week in France, showed something that we had already started to guess at the end of last year: we have been talking about uncertainty for so long that it has become the new normal.
In other words, the behaviors that are generally expected from companies and individuals, to face these moments of uncertainty – reduction in consumption, reduction in investment, controlled diversification of the customer portfolio – are not occurring. In fact, estimates point to continued growth in the world economy – and the results that are now beginning to be presented, relating to companies’ activities last year, seem to precisely confirm this trend.
Basically, the same thing is happening that happens when tragedies become very recurrent or the number of deaths in an accident is so high, that we begin to desensitize – psychology calls it psychic numbingor psychic numbness. In fact, it is a defense mechanism that our brain uses, at a certain point, because it can no longer process such a level of suffering. When we are talking about a high number of victims, for example, it is impossible for us to feel equal pain for each one of them, because that would destroy us.
Leave a Reply