By Peter Nurse
Investing.com - European stock markets traded largely lower Monday, helped by a positive tone from Asia but talk of more sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine weighed.
By 3:25 AM ET (0725 GMT), the DAX in Germany traded 0.6% lower, the CAC 40 in France fell 0.6%, while U.K.’s FTSE 100 climbed 0.1%.
Some European Union governments are now thinking of new sanctions on Moscow after Ukrainian and European officials accused Russian forces of atrocities in the town of Bucha, denied by Russia's defense ministry.
Germany's defense minister said on Sunday that the European Union must discuss banning imports of Russian gas, a step that would have severe economic ramifications on European growth given the reliance of a number of Eurozone countries, and Germany, in particular, on Moscow for energy supplies.
This talk has tended to overshadow a strong performance from equity markets in Asia, and Chinese technology stocks in Hong Kong, in particular, earlier Monday after Beijing announced plans to remove a key hurdle, preventing full U.S. access to audits of Chinese firms listed there.
These changes may reduce the risk of Chinese firms losing their Wall Street listings, the potential of which has weighed heavily on the sector.
Back in Europe, European producer price data for February are due later in the session and are expected to show a hefty annual rise of 27%, further illustrating the pressures the European Central Bank is under to act after data last week showed Eurozone consumer inflation hitting a fresh record high of 7.5% in March.
The ECB is set to publish the minutes of its March meeting on Thursday, and these will be studied carefully ahead of its upcoming meeting on April 14.
In corporate news, Novartis (SIX:NOVN) stock rose 0.8% after the Swiss drugmaker said it was integrating its pharmaceuticals and oncology units into an innovative medicines business to simplify its structure, targeting savings of at least $1 billion by 2024.
Rival drugmaker Roche (SIX:RO) stock rose 1.5% after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted priority review to its drug to treat COVID in hospitalized adults.
Oil prices traded higher Monday, recouping some of last week’s hefty losses as a number of major consuming nations, led by the U.S., announced plans to release crude from their strategic reserves in an attempt to cool soaring prices.
The U.S. announced, late last week, plans to release one million barrels a day for six months, starting in May, while members of the International Energy Agency also agreed to release more oil.
By 2:30 AM ET, U.S. crude futures traded 1% higher at $100.30 a barrel, while the Brent contract rose 1% to $105.47. The two benchmarks both recorded weekly losses of around 13% last week.
Additionally, gold futures rose 0.3% to $1,930.20/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.2% lower at 1.1036.