By Peter Nurse
Investing.com - European stock markets are expected to open largely lower Wednesday, weighed by weakness on Wall Street overnight due to worries over slowing economic growth.
At 2:05 AM ET (0605 GMT), the DAX futures contract in Germany traded 0.1% higher, but CAC 40 futures in France dropped 0.1% and the FTSE 100 futures contract in the U.K. fell 0.3%.
The U.S. stock markets started the holiday-shortened week on a subdued note Tuesday, with the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average falling over 260 points, or 0.8%.
Worries of slowing growth, exacerbated by the disappointing August jobs report just as the Federal Reserve considers pulling back its bond-buying program, have prompted a more risk-averse mood.
This weakened sentiment has carried over into Europe on Wednesday, even after Japan followed the Eurozone in revising its estimate for second-quarter growth higher, to 1.9% from the initial estimate of 1.3%.
The European data slate is relatively empty Wednesday, with just French trade data and Italian retail sales scheduled to emerge. Most attention will be on Thursday’s European Central Bank meeting, with the governing council members potentially discussing a reduction in its asset purchasing program.
In corporate news, Sanofi (PA:SASY) (NASDAQ:SNY) will be in the spotlight after the French drugmaker announced plans to buy U.S. biopharmaceutical company Kadmon (NASDAQ:KDMN) in a $1.9 billion deal.
BHP Group (NYSE:BHP) is also in the news after the world’s largest miner announced plans to team up with AI exploration firm KoBold Metals to look for battery minerals like copper and Nickel in Australia and other global locations.
Crude prices stabilized on Wednesday after recent losses, with attention turning to the U.S. market as producers in the Gulf of Mexico struggle to restart operations in the wake of Hurricane Ida.
Over a week after the hurricane made landfall, more than three-quarters of U.S. Gulf production remains offline. The inventory data from the American Petroleum Institute later Wednesday and the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Thursday will be studied closely, as traders look for a more complete picture of the storm's impact on crude production and refinery output.
By 2:05 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 0.6% higher at $68.78 a barrel, while the Brent contract rose 0.5% to $72.05.
Additionally, gold futures fell 0.1% to $1,797.75/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.1% lower at 1.1833.