By Peter Nurse
Investing.com - European stock markets traded higher Wednesday, stabilizing after the previous session’s sharp losses, but concerns remain over slowing growth and high inflation levels.
At 4 AM ET (0800 GMT), the DAX in Germany traded 1% higher, the CAC 40 in France rose 1% and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 climbed 0.9%.
European stocks steadied on Wednesday after one of the worst market routs this year, prompted by losses on Wall Street after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told the Senate Banking Committee that inflation could stay "elevated" longer than the central bank had previously predicted.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield climbed to a high of 1.57% on Tuesday, but has since retreated to 1.53%.
Fears that elevated inflationary levels will prompt central banks to rein in their stimulus measures just as global growth starts to stagnate have hurt stock markets of late.
Spanish consumer prices rose 4% in September from a year earlier, the fastest pace in 13 years, according to data released earlier Wednesday. German import prices, typically a reliable advance indicator of inflation, rose another 1.4% in August, taking their year-on-year rise to over 16%, while Italian producer price inflation accelerated to 11.6%, the fastest in more than 25 years.
This puts the spotlight on Eurozone inflation data due to be released on Friday and forecast to hit 3.3%.
In corporate news, AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) stock gained 2.7% after the drugmaker said its newly acquired Alexion (NASDAQ:ALXN) division will purchase the remaining equity in drugmaker Caelum Biosciences in a deal that could be worth up to $500 million.
Next (LON:NXT) stock rose 3% after the U.K. retailer published stronger than expected half-year results, but warned that areas of its business were "beginning to come under pressure", including warehouse and logistics staffing.
On the flip side, Air France KLM (OTC:AFLYY) stock fell 2.7% following comments from Anne Rigail,CEO of the French flag carrier, that it was only seeing a small recovery in business travel on domestic routes and adding that premium travel remained far below pre-crisis levels.
Crude prices weakened Wednesday following a surprise increase in U.S. crude stockpiles. U.S. crude inventories grew by just over 4 million barrels last week, according to the American Petroleum Institute. That would be the first increase in the country’s stocks in eight weeks if confirmed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration later on Wednesday.
By 4 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 1% lower at $74.56 a barrel, slipping from its highest level since July, while the Brent contract fell 0.9% to $77.61, after previously reaching its highest since October 2018.
Additionally, gold futures rose 0.1% to $1,739.65/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.2% lower at 1.1656.