European Shares Seen Up On Dovish Fed

(RTTNews) - European stocks are poised to open higher on Thursday, as investors react to dovish comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell and shift focus to the ECB and BoE meetings due later in the day.

Both central banks are expected to raise rates by 50 basis points and ECB President Lagarde's press conference will be the key driver for markets.

In economic releases, U.S. data on jobless claims, factory orders, core durable goods orders, and nonfarm productivity and unit labor cost numbers will be in focus ahead of January's hiring numbers coming out Friday.

On the earnings front, major tech companies including Apple, Alphabet and Amazon will unveil their quarterly earnings reports later in the day.

Asian markets were seeing modest gains, as bond yields fell and the dollar hit its lowest level since April on bets that the Fed will reverse course and cut interest rates later this year to stimulate the economy.

Gold extended gains after hitting its highest since April 2022 earlier in the session.

Oil prices rose slightly in Asian trading, after having fallen over 3 percent to end at three-week low on Wednesday amid signs of another large build in U.S. inventories. Meanwhile, OPEC+ left production targets unchanged at their gathering Wednesday.

U.S. stocks rallied overnight to close at their highest level since last summer, the dollar extended losses and Treasury yields fell after the Fed raised rates by 25 bps, as widely expected, and said "ongoing increases" in main rate will be appropriate in its battle to lower inflation.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged that inflation was starting to ease and that financial conditions had tightening significantly over the past year.

On the data front, private payrolls growth slowed in January while manufacturing contracted for the third consecutive month, separate reports showed.

The Dow inched up marginally, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite jumped 2 percent and the S&P 500 surged 1.1 percent.

European stocks gave up early gains to end mixed on Wednesday as the Fed decision loomed.

The pan European STOXX 600 ended flat with a negative bias. The German DAX rose 0.4 percent, while France's CAC 40 and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 both closed marginally lower.