By Peter Nurse
Investing.com - European stock markets are seen opening higher Tuesday, helped by signs of progress towards further U.S. stimulus, while concerns over volatile retail-led trading receded.
At 2 AM ET (0700 GMT), the DAX futures contract in Germany traded 0.2% higher, CAC 40 futures in France climbed 0.7% and the FTSE 100 futures contract in the U.K. rose 0.5%.
U.S. President Joe Biden sat down late Monday with a group of ten Republican senators to discuss their proposal of a scaled-back Covid-19 stimulus package, in a welcome sign of bipartisan co-operation in Washington.
That said, Biden insisted on keeping the $1.9 trillion price tag that he proposed in January, saying that the downsized effort does not go far enough to solve the coronavirus crisis. And senior Democrats later filed a joint $1.9 trillion budget measure in a step toward aimed at bypassing Republicans.
Indications that this package may be shortly delivered buoyed global markets, as well as hopes that economic recovery may not be too far away: vaccination rollouts continue, despite the slow start in continental Europe, and new infections and fatalities are starting to decline slowly in response to lockdowns.
Adding to the optimism were signs that the recent market turmoil caused by retail traders taking on hedge funds over heavily-shorted stocks may be settling down.
GameStop (NYSE:GME), the stock at the heart of last week’s protest, saw its shares slide 30% on Monday, and they have continued to fall in premarket trading Tuesday. Similarly, silver, which saw heavy buying on Monday, has dropped over 2% so far Tuesday.
The earnings season continues in Europe Tuesday, with results from the likes of oil major BP (NYSE:BP), Siemens Energy (DE:ENR1n) and Swedish telecommunications company Tele2 (ST:TEL2b) in focus.
On the data front, the eurozone will publish preliminary fourth-quarter growth numbers later Tuesday, which are expected to confirm that the region's economy shrunk on the year.
Oil prices pushed higher Tuesday, helped by newswire reports that the major oil producers have shown restraint in terms of production levels in January even as prices rose.
U.S. crude oil supply data from the American Petroleum Institute, due later Tuesday, will be keenly awaited, especially after last week’s hefty draw, while OPEC+'s Joint Technical Committee is also due to discuss the state of the market.
U.S. crude futures traded 1.1% higher at $54.15 a barrel, while the international benchmark Brent contract rose 1.1% to $56.98.
Elsewhere, gold futures fell 0.4% to $1,857.40/oz, while Silver Futures futures were down 5% after their spike on Monday at $27.85 and EUR/USD traded 0.1% higher at 1.2071.