Stocks steady even as political upheaval dominates markets

Global stocks firmed on Monday after recovering from an earlier rout when the collapse of the French government took markets by surprise, while political developments in Japan lifted Japanese equities but weighed on the yen.

- 

New French Prime Minister Sebastien Le-cornu resigned on Monday, barely 14 hours after appointing his cabinet.

At 1150 GMT, the pan-European benchmark STOXX 600 was up 0.138, but France's CAC 40 was still down 1.28, having earlier sunk as much as 2.28.

US S&P 500 futures firmed 0.38 ahead of the open, with the cash index having risen to a record high on Friday.

Al enthusiasm is partly behind the market firmness, with stocks staying near record highs even as a US government shutdown rumbles on. Tech shares in Europe got a small boost after news that AMD has signed an AI chip-supply deal with Open AI on Monday, and were last up 1.18.

Market attention stayed on France, with the country’s bank shares hardest hit. BNP Paribas, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole fell between 3.8% and 4.88.

"The bigger concern for the market is really what comes next, because if Macron decides to appoint another prime minister that’s going to be the sixth PM in two years,” said Michael Brown, senior research strategist at Pepperstone. Any newcomer would face the same challenging parliamentary arithmetic and problems when trying to pass the budget, said Brown.