Earnings: Shell, Deutsche, H&M top mixed bill
Investors were a little unsure of Shell on Thursday (January 30).
The oil giant's shares down around 4 per cent at one point ...
And among the biggest drags on stock prices ....
On news its quarterly profits halved in Q4 - to just under 3 billion dollars.
There's collateral damage too: Shell's share buyback will slow to one billion dollars or so in Q1 - down from 2.75 billion dollars previously.
Shell has already warned that slowing global growth due to the Sino-U.S. trade war has hit energy demand.
Weaker oil and gas prices pushed it to take a 1.65 billion dollar charge on its U.S. gas fields.
Deutsche Bank also made grim reading.
The German lender plunged to a bigger than expected 6.3 billion dollars loss last year, its fifth in a row.
The cost of its latest turnaround attempt is hitting earnings.
Deutsche still in recovery mode under CEO Christian Sewing - after a series of scandals, a failed bid to take on Wall Street heavyweights, and an aborted merger with Commerzbank.
Sewing is in a 7.4-billion euro drive to cut 18,000 jobs, shrink its investment bank and refocus on corporate and private banking.
For more upbeat reading, investors turned instead to H&M.
The Swedish fashion giant has appointed company veteran Helena Helmersson as CEO - and reported its first rise in annual profit since 2015.
Shares surged as much as 10% after it also beat Q4 earnings expectations.
