The Spanish stock market opened Thursday with a slight advance as investors speculate about rapid interest rate cuts next year, in a day that is expected to bring few reasons to take new positions.

"The market seems to further increase the optimism of recent weeks on the expectation that central banks will end up being much more aggressive than they are letting on with rate cuts in 2024," said analysts at Banco Sabadell.

At the securities firm Renta 4, they highlight the drop in debt yields -due to the bets of reductions in the price of money-, which "continues to be gasoline for the (stock) markets".

All in all, in the previous five sessions the Ibex-35, an index of the heavyweights of the Spanish stock market, has shown sideways movements in the face of signs of exhaustion of the meteoric rise experienced in November and early December, which placed the selective at its highest levels since 2018.

The stagnation of equities would have been contributed to by fears that bets of cuts in the cost of debt are exaggerated and disappointment in this regard will lead to a major correction in the indices.

There will be few clues from the macroeconomic front on the possible next steps by the major central banks in the two days remaining to close the year.

On Thursday, the weekly US unemployment report will be released, with an expected 210,000 jobless claims, and on Friday it will be the turn of the provisional Spanish CPI for December ----. Analysts expect an increase of 3.4%, slightly above November's 3.3%.

Against this backdrop, at 08:02 GMT on Thursday, the selective Spanish stock market index Ibex-35 was up 12.20 points, or 0.12%, to 10,134.00 points, while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of large European stocks was up 0.31%.

In the banking sector, Santander rose 0.12%, BBVA gained 0.07%, Caixabank gave up 0.05%, Sabadell fell 0.14%, Bankinter gained 0.17%, and Unicaja Banco rose 0.28%.

Among the large non-financial stocks, Telefónica fell 0.42%, Inditex advanced 0.20%, Iberdrola gained 0.34%, Cellnex gained 0.39%, and the oil company Repsol lost 0.33%.

Over the year as a whole, the Ibex-35 accumulated an advance of 23%, its best year since 2009, while in the month of December it recorded an increase of 0.74%.

(Information by Tomás Cobos)