A woman walks on a bridge in front of the banking district skyline with the Commerzbank building (3R) and the Cathedral (R) during sunset in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, on September 18, 2024.
Kirill Kudryavtsev | Afp | Getty Images
European markets slipped Thursday as investors digested fresh U.S. inflation data, which came in above expectations.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 provisionally closed 0.18% lower, with most sectors and major bourses in the red.
Insurance stocks added 1.06%, as Hurricane Milton’s devastating hit to Florida pointed to stronger prospects for the sector. Tech stocks, meanwhile, fell 1%, reversing positive momentum from earlier in the week.
Shares of British drugmaker GSK rose 3.2% after the company struck a deal to pay up to $2.2 billion to resolve a U.S. lawsuit over its heartburn treatment Zantac.
In European data, the German government forecast the country’s first two-year recession in almost two decades.
Stateside, U.S. inflation ticked up in September, rising 0.2% over the month and surprising economists, fresh CPI data from the Labor Department showed Thursday.
The annual inflation rate came in at 2.4%. Both readings were 0.1 percentage point above the Dow Jones consensus.
The reading will inform the Federal Reserve’s next steps on policy at its November meeting. Fed funds futures trading data suggests a roughly 70% likelihood of a quarter-point cut, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool.
U.S. stocks opened lower, while Asia-Pacific markets closely mostly higher on Thursday, buoyed by gains on Wall Street on Wednesday.
The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average reached new records as investors shook off geopolitical concerns and reacted to the release of minutes from the Fed’s September meeting, at which it cut its key rate by 50 basis points, and revealed that a “substantial majority of participants” had favored reducing interest rates by the larger amount.