European Shares Seen Broadly Higher As US Averts Government Shutdown

(RTTNews) - European stocks are likely to open mostly higher on Monday, heading into a holiday-shortened week.

It will be a pretty quiet week due to the upcoming Boxing Day and Christmas Day holidays.

Nonetheless, fund managers may engage in some year-end window-dressing to show case good performance to their investors or shareholders.

U.S. stock futures advanced and Asian markets were broadly higher as a benign U.S. inflation reading on U.S. inflation helped revive investor hopes for further policy easing by the Federal Reserve in 2025.

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee told CNBC's Steve Liesman he's hopeful the data suggests "the couple of months of firming were more of a bump than a change in path."

Sentiment was also underpinned after the U.S. Senate approved a funding bill early Saturday, narrowly avoiding a government shutdown.

In economic releases, U.K. GDP data is due later in the day. The British economy is forecast to grow marginally by 0.1 percent, as initially estimated in the third quarter, following a 0.5 percent expansion in the second quarter.

The U.S. economic calendar remains light his week, with reports on durable goods orders and new home sales awaited.

Asian markets were seeing solid gains after the Dow and the S&P recorded their biggest single-day percentage gains since November 6 Friday on the back of softer inflation data.

Speculation around more stimulus Chinese measures also helped investors shrug off lingering worries about potential U.S. tariffs in 2025 under the incoming Trump administration.

Gold was little changed near $2,620 per ounce in Asian trade and the dollar index was steady while oil edged up slightly after a weekly decline.

U.S. stocks logged strong gains on Friday after the release of softer-than-expected inflation figures.

Data showed PCE Inflation, the Fed's preferred reading on consumer price inflation, has increased 0.1 percent month-on-month in November versus expectations of a 0.2 percent increase.

The annual rate rose to 2.4 percent from 2.3 percent in the previous month but was still below the 2.5 percent anticipated by markets.

The core PCE eased to 0.1 percent from 0.3 percent in October and the yearly rate held steady at 2.8 percent.

The Dow surged 1.2 percent after having finished marginally higher the previous day to snap a ten-day losing streak.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rallied 1 percent and the S&P 500 added 1.1 percent. European stocks ended lower for a second day running on Friday amid political uncertainty in Germany and France, fears of a U.S. government shutdown and worries about Trump's tariff threats.

The pan European STOXX 600 shed 0.9 percent. The German DAX dipped 0.4 percent, while France's CAC 40 and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 both slipped around 0.3 percent.