European stocks retreat, continuing global selloff; Currys slumps
Investing.com — European stock markets fell Monday, continuing the losses seen in Asia overnight after Friday's weakness on Wall Street, ahead of the release of key U.S. inflation data.
At 03:10 ET (08:10 GMT), the DAX index in Germany traded 0.7% lower, the CAC 40 in France traded 0.4% lower and the FTSE 100 in the U.K. dropped 0.2%.
European equities have continued the global selloff at the start of the new week, with regional markets tracking a sharp decline in Wall Street on Friday, as growing uncertainty over U.S. interest rates saw traders lock-in profits at record highs, especially in the technology sector.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index dropped over 2% as an upward revision in the country’s GDP showed that the economy avoided a recession in the fourth quarter, providing the Bank of Japan with more headroom to potentially begin raising interest rates when it meets next week.
There’s little in the way of significant economic data in Europe Monday, and thus investors are likely to be cautious ahead of Tuesday's U.S. inflation data as they try to gauge how soon the Fed could start cutting interest rates.
On Thursday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said it would likely be appropriate to cut rates “at some point this year,” but made it clear that the central bank was still looking for confirmation that inflation had been truly tamed.
Back in Europe, the European Central Bank cut its projections for growth and inflation last week, with President Christine Lagarde pointing towards June as a possible start to a rate-cutting cycle, saying the central bank would then have «a lot» of the information it needs for such a decision.
The fourth-quarter corporate earnings season is ending, but there are still some companies in the
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