The Ibex and the banking sector, united once more in the direction of new highs | Opinion | EUROtoday

The Ibex has completed shaking off all of the complexes originally of 2026. It has been buying and selling for years behind its European neighbors, which effectively earlier than the pandemic had already managed to recuperate the highs previous to the impression of the Great Financial Crisis. The Ibex’s all-time excessive reached in November 2007 remained unbeatable till it fell in October.

Like its neighbors, the Ibex is already transferring naturally within the report zone, now in an atmosphere that’s extra favorable to it and through which it’s making up for misplaced time. It additionally performs with the favor of worldwide buyers who had saved the Spanish inventory market off the radar and who now discover a refuge within the Ibex from the turbulent world panorama.

The Ibex missed the substitute intelligence inventory market rally, punished for not having technological leaders. Money was flowing in abundance to Wall Street, however it’s now that the US inventory market is faltering – underneath the strain of Trump’s erratic tariffs and doubts about AI – that buyers discover in Spanish equities a vacation spot through which to diversify their portfolio with relative peace of thoughts. The weight within the index of huge exporting firms, which undergo extra from tariffs, is lower than that of the German Dax or the French Cac. And within the absence of technological giants, the Ibex doesn’t undergo from doubts about when the million-dollar investments in AI might be worthwhile. Instead, it channels the funding urge for food for brand spanking new expertise in a extra oblique approach, by way of the electrical energy firms that must provide the sturdy demand that AI requires and the builders of information facilities, akin to ACS.

The Spanish inventory market has stable representatives of future developments such because the vitality transition and classics akin to banking, the true assist of the rally. The rise within the banks’ inventory market has as soon as once more given them a weight that that they had not had since earlier than the burst of the actual property bubble.

Banking already accounts for 40% of the selective, a degree of focus that additionally makes it extra fragile within the face of future shocks. Delinquency is at bay and financial progress is stable, however a disturbing hyperlink seems inside the monetary system: the opacity of personal credit score, which is having a powerful impression on people. It is for a lot of the present nice threat of the market. At the second, monetary stability is way from being unsure. But if in some unspecified time in the future it trembles, the banks, and with them the Ibex, would be the first to take the hit.

https://cincodias.elpais.com/opinion/2026-03-02/el-ibex-y-la-banca-de-nuevo-unidos-hacia-nuevos-maximos.html