By Paolo Laudani and Sruthi Shankar
(Reuters) -European shares slipped on Thursday, with technology and mining stocks leading losses, while investors looked out U.S. inflation data for hints on the Federal Reserve’s next policy easing moves.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.2%, with tech, mining and travel and leisure stocks leading morning declines.
European stocks were under pressure as bond yields rose on Thursday, with the German 10-year yield hitting a fresh one-month high, tracking overnight gains in U.S. Treasury yields. [US/]
Wall Street indexes touched record highs on Wednesday after the Fed’s September meeting minutes showed a “substantial majority” of officials supported an outsized half-point rate cut, without committing to a particular pace of cuts in the future.
Data at 1230 GMT (8:30 a.m. ET) is expected to show U.S. consumer prices rose 0.1% in September on a month-over-month basis, compared with a 0.2% increase in August. Traders are currently pricing in an 85% chance of a smaller 25-basis-point reduction from the Fed next month.
“Markets are muted as they’re waiting to see what happens with the U.S. CPI (consumer price index) and, more importantly, what’s happening on Saturday morning in China,” said Stefan Koopman, senior market economist at Rabobank.
“If we get a cooler-than-expected CPI, it won’t raise expectations of a 50-basis-point cut; I think the risk is not symmetrical on that report.”
The STOXX 600 has been choppy this week as uncertainty around Beijing’s stimulus plans weighed on sentiment. China’s finance ministry will detail plans on fiscal stimulus at a highly anticipated news conference on Saturday.
Investors will also focus on the French government’s 2025 budget later on Thursday, with plans for 60 billion euros ($65.68 billion) worth of tax hikes and spending cuts to tackle a spiralling fiscal deficit.
Markets are likely to pay close attention to whether the budget can get through parliament without being watered down too much.
“It should be a very credible budget and if it’s not, French assets will be at risk tomorrow morning,” said Rabobank’s Koopman.
Among individual stocks, GSK jumped 5.2% after the British drugmaker agreed to pay up to $2.2 billion to settle lawsuits in the United States that claimed its discontinued heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer. The figure was smaller than what some analysts had feared.
Shares in Italy’s fourth-largest bank BPER rose 7.6% to touch a nine-year high after the lender provided a new 2024-2027 business plan.
