The Spanish stock market index Ibex-35 reopened on Tuesday after the holiday weekend, extending the losses with which it closed the previous week, in a context of caution in equities due to renewed fears about the banking sector and the global economy, in a week of important central bank meetings.

With the Spanish markets still at half speed due to the holiday in Madrid, investors returned from the May 1st break with the news of the rescue of First Republic Bank by the US and its subsequent sale to JPMorgan, which rekindled concerns about a possible global banking crisis.

Regarding the market reaction, Renta 4 analysts pointed out that, despite the orderly rescue, "the US regional banking index fell 2.6% (First Republic suspended from trading, -97% in 2023), a sign that some uncertainty remains, with the potential negative implications on credit to the real economy and thus on the economic cycle".

After the stimulus of strong banking results in recent weeks, the focus is back on economic developments, with persistent inflation and the specter of a financial crisis adding pressure on this week's meetings of the Federal Reserve (Tuesday and Wednesday) and the European Central Bank (Thursday).

In this regard, the Australian central bank surprised markets on Tuesday with a 25 basis point rate hike and a warning that further hikes could be ahead.

Ahead of the week's monetary meetings, the main references of the session will be the Eurozone PMI and CPI for April and the JOLTS job openings survey for March in the United States.

Thus, at 07:05 GMT on Tuesday, the selective Spanish stock market index Ibex-35 opened the month of May with a loss of 22.70 points, or 0.25%, to 9,218.30 points, while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of large European stocks advanced 0.04%.

In the banking sector, Santander lost 0.28%, BBVA gained 0.03%, Caixabank advanced 0.15%, Sabadell gained 0.02%, Bankinter lost 0.11%, and Unicaja Banco rose 0.38%.

Among the large non-financial stocks, Telefónica fell 0.87%, Inditex advanced 0.29%, Iberdrola gained 0.13%, Cellnex fell 0.21%, and the oil company Repsol lost 1.16%.

(Information by Darío Fernández; edited by Tomás Cobos).