European Stocks Fail To Hold Gains, Settle Flat

(RTTNews) - European stocks failed to hold early gains and closed on a mixed note on Friday with investors digesting Fed Chair Jerome Powell's speech at the Jackson Hole Symposium and making cautious moves.

Stocks gained early on in the session thanks to some encouraging economic data.

In his keynote address at the meet, Powell warned that further interest rate increases could be necessary in the fight against inflation.

"We are prepared to raise rates further if appropriate," Powell said, and added that the U.S. central bank intends "to hold policy at a restrictive level until we are confident that inflation is moving sustainably down toward our objective."

The pan European Stoxx 600 edged down 0.04%. The U.K.'s FTSE and Germany's DAX both ended 0.07% up, and France's CAC 40 gained 0.21%, while Switzerland's SMI closed lower by 0.18%.

Among other markets in Europe, Austria, Finland, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Turkiye closed higher.

Czech Republic, Denmark, Iceland and Poland ended weak, while Belgium and Netherlands closed flat.

In the UK market, Tesco, Smurfit Kappa Group, Melrose Industries, Intertek Group, CRH, Centrica, Sainsbury (J), Smiths Group, Smith (DS) and Airtel Africa gained 1 to 2%.

Endeavour Mining ended lower by 2.75%. Fresnillo lost 2.1%. IAG, Prudential, Johnson Matthey, Ocado Group and Taylor Wimpey declined 1 to 1.6%.

CMC Markets, a provider of online retail and institutional platform technology, plunged more than 8% after the company said that it sees lower net revenue trends for the fiscal 2024, on continued subdued market conditions.

In the German market, E.ON, Beiersdorf, Symrise and RWE posted moderate gains.

Covestro ended down 2.1%. Continental and Sartorius lost 1.4% and 1.25%, respectively.

In Paris, Stellantis, Vinci, Engie, Pernod Ricard, Edenred, Veolia and Sanofi gained 0.6 to 1.1%, while Unibail Rodamco, Alstom, WorldLine, Capgemini, Kering, Credit Agricole and BNP Paribas ended weak.

On the economic front, Germany's economy stabilized as estimated in the second quarter as weak foreign demand offset the strength in government spending and investment, latest data from Destatis showed.

Gross domestic product posted nil growth in the second quarter after a 0.1% fall in the first quarter and a 0.4% decline in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Business sentiment among German companies deteriorated for a fourth month in a row in August as their assessment of the current situation weakened sharply and they turned more pessimistic regarding the outlook, survey data from the ifo institute showed.

The ifo business climate index dropped to 85.7 points from 87.4 in July. Economists had forecast a reading of 86.7.

France's manufacturing confidence deteriorated to the lowest since early 2021 on weak assessment of order books and past production, monthly survey results published by the statistical office INSEE showed on Thursday.

The manufacturing sentiment index slid to 96 in August from 101 in July. This was the lowest reading since January 2021 and also below economists' forecast of 99.