European Stock Futures Higher; Fed Decision, ECB and BOE meetings focus on Investing.com

By Peter Nurser

Investing.com – European stock markets are expected to open higher on Thursday as investors digest the Federal Reserve’s move against inflation ahead of political decisions by the European Central Bank and the Bank of England.

At 02:00 ET (0700 GMT), the contract in Germany was up 0.6%, in France it was up 1.5% and the UK contract was up 0.4%.

He announced on Wednesday night that he would double the pace of the asset reduction program to $ 30 billion a month and predicted a three-quarter interest rate hike in 2022.

This suggested that Fed officials were strong enough in the U.S. economy to manage the Omicron variant as well as tighten monetary policy as they moved to deal with high inflation levels.

“The economy no longer needs more political support,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said at a news conference after the end of the two-day policy meeting.

There is more central bank activity in Europe on Thursday, as well as the need to strike a balance between the need to support economies threatened by the Covid-19 virus, with the aim of tackling inflationary pressures.

The BoE is seen as more likely to tighten monetary policy after Wednesday’s data showed that the British had risen to a 10-year high in November.

Economic data will focus on Thursday’s Eurozone and UK UK purchasing managers ’index numbers on Thursday, with notes reflecting Covid’s cuts and partial blockades in many regions.

In corporate news, Telecom Italia (MI 🙂 is likely to be in the spotlight as Reuters is considering pushing for a change in the board of Italy’s chief investor Vivendi (OTC 🙂 in the Italian phone group with the aim of removing former CEO Luigi Gubitosi.

On the other hand, Volkswagen (DE 🙂 could also pay attention after the magazine manager announced that it expects its sales to fall below 9 million vehicles this year, due to the weight of the semiconductor’s bottlenecks in production. The German car giant had sales of 11 million units in 2019.

Novartis (SIX 🙂 It is launching a new $ 15 billion share purchase to run by the end of 2023, the Swiss drug giant said it has confidence in its high-growth and deep pipeline.

With oil prices falling sharply since September saw the biggest drop in oil prices since September, it suggests that demand remains strong among the world’s largest consumers, although the Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus threatens to reduce global consumption.

It fell 4.58 million barrels last week, according to a report released by the Energy Information Administration on Wednesday night. There was a much larger decline than indicated by an industry report on Tuesday.

By 2 p.m., U.S. gross futures were trading 1.3% higher at $ 71.81 a barrel, while the contract rose 1.2% to $ 74.77.

In addition, it rose 1.2% to $ 1,785.20 / oz, up 0.1% from 1,1296.