Europe midday: Stocks hold near session highs
European stocks are holding near their best levels of the day following Wednesday's dovish Congressional testimony from US Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen.
Areva
€4.50
16:30 29/01/18
Assicurazioni Generali
€23.01
13:40 24/03/23
DJ EURO STOXX 50
4,989.88
00:00 25/04/24
To take note of, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuele Macron were scheduled to hold a joint cabinet meeting in Paris, with the US President set to travel to the French capital on the same day.
By noon, the Stoxx 600 was ahead by 0.49% or 1.90 points to 386.81, alongside a gain of 0.58% or 30.07 points to 5,251.83 for Paris's Cac-40 and an advance of 0.25% for the FTSE Mibtel to 21,487.59.
Commenting on the Fed chief's testimony, Mickey Levy and Roiana Reid at Berenberg Capital Markets said: "Note that the real Fed funds rate remains negative but less so as a consequence of the downward drift in inflation as well as the Fed rate hikes.
"A December rate increase would put the real Funds rate close to zero, if only part of the recent decline in inflation is retraced. Combined with the Fed’s balance sheet, that would leave monetary policy accommodative. But if inflation does not rebound, the Yellen-led Fed may slow its pace of normalization."
Acting as a backdrop, the latest Chinese trade numbers came in ahead of forecasts, belying the pick-up in global trade and the underlying economy.
Chinese export growth accelerated from a 15.5% year-on-year clip in May to 17.3% for June (consensus: 14.6%). Import growth was also stronger than expected.
Germany's harmonised consumer price index for June advanced at a 1.5% year-on-year clip, as expected, a final data from the Federal Office of Statistics revealed.
France's own harmonised CPI was up by 0.8% on the year and flat month-on-month, INSEE said, which was also in-line with economists' forecasts.
It was a similar story in Spain, where INE confirmed that CPI slipped from a 2.0% pace in May to 1.6% in June.
Later in the session, traders would peruse the latest weekly unemployment figures in the States, together with the latest data on factory prices, both at 1330 BST.
Italy's doBank announced it had set the price for its upcoming stockmarket debut at €9 per share and that its IPO was 4.65 times oversubscribed.
The French government completed a €2bn equity raise for nuclear engineer Areva.
Italian insurer Generali put its €44bn German life insurance portfolio up for sale, Reuters reported citing sources familiar with the matter.