Sales growth at heavily indebted retailer Casino slowed in the first quarter, dragged down by its supermarkets and hypermarkets in its core French market.
Profit at oil major Shell fell slightly from the previous quarter to $9.65 billion, but topped expectations. In corporate news, it's another heavy day for earnings releases. Euro STOXX bank futures fell 0.7%, slightly underperforming after fresh signs of stress from another U.S. Shares in Europe looked set to open a touch lower on Thursday after the Federal Reserve opened the door to a pause in its year-long tightening campaign, hours before an European Central Bank rate decision.Įuro zone policymakers are widely expected to raise borrowing costs by another 25 basis points later on but a bigger hike is not ruled out either, as the bloc grapples with sticky inflation.Įuro STOXX and FTSE 100 futures fell 0.3-0.4% around 30 minutes before the cash market open. It was last above 20 points.ĮUROPE SIGNALS WEAK START ON ECB DAY (0614 GMT) Trading however remained nervous ahead of likely rate increase at the ECB.Ī gauge of euro zone volatility (.V2TX) briefly hit a 5-week high before paring back. regional banks, and were last unchanged on the day. STOXX DIPS, OIL STOCKS BOUNCE, BANKS STEADY (0839 GMT)Įuropean shares were off to a cautious start on Thursday with the region-wide STOXX 600 S SXXP index falling around 0.4% in morning deal, dragged down by losses spread across most sectors on another heavy day for earnings releases.Īmong top STOXX fallers were lender Virgin Money, builder Skanska and defence group Leonardo, all down more than 6% following disappointing quarterly numbers.Įnergy (.SXEP) stocks bucked the broader weakness, up 0.8% following recent losses, helped by profit beats at oil majors Shell and Equinor.īanks (.SX7P) showed little signs of being bothered by the latest signs of stress from U.S. Overall, Capital Economics expects the MSCI China Index to rise by around 12% by the end of this year even as other emerging market indexes struggle as the U.S. That suggests to us that sentiment towards the country's market is still not overly optimistic, leaving room for further gains over the rest of this year." "Second, the valuations of equities in China generally still look quite low. This should give a boost to corporate earnings. "First, while we do expect China's recovery to slow, we think the strong economic momentum will keep growth fairly strong over the rest of this year," they write. However, the consultancy still expects China's equity markets to make further gains this year. "Part of the reason China's rapid economic rebound hasn't led to a renewed market rally over the last month could be that investors fear it will be offset by a smaller policy stimulus," Capital Economics market economists write in a note.
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