European Shares Mixed Amid Recession Worries

(RTTNews) - European shares traded mixed on Wednesday as weak trade data from China overshadowed investor optimism over easing of COVID curbs in the country.

The dollar climbed in early European trade, as top U.S. banks warned of a recession in 2023 and better-than-expected data from the U.S. services sector rekindled expectations for rapid rate rises from the Federal Reserve.

Markets eye central bank decisions, with the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve all due to hold their monetary policy meetings next week.

Interest rates will go up again, though they are now "very near" their neutral level, ECB policymaker Constantinos Herodotou said on Tuesday.

The pan European STOXX 600 slipped 0.1 percent to 438.47 after declining 0.6 percent on Tuesday.

The German DAX edged up 0.2 percent, France's CAC 40 was marginally higher and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 rose 0.2 percent.

Miners Anglo American, Antofagasta and Glencore fell 1-2 percent in London after data showed China's exports and imports both shrank to their weakest level since mid-2020 in November.

Energy stocks followed suit, with BP Plc and Shell both falling over 1 percent, after Brent crude futures settled below $80 on Tuesday for the first time since early January.

GSK soared 10.5 percent and French peer Sanofi SA surged 5.8 percent after a favourable U.S. court ruling involving the heartburn drug Zantac.

Airbus SE shares declined 1.5 percent in Paris. The aerospace major announced that it is unlikely to meet its 2022 commercial aircraft delivery target.

MorphoSys AG jumped 2.2 percent after signing a licensing deal with Novartis for a cancer program.

Klöckner & Co. fell 1.4 percent. The company said it has received the first CO2-minimized stainless-steel coil from Outokumpu.

In economic releases, official data showed earlier today that German industrial production dropped 0.1 percent on a monthly basis in October, slower than the expected fall of 0.6 percent.

Nonetheless, the fall was in contrast to the revised 1.1 percent increase seen in September.

Separately, U.K. housing market continued to slow in November as house prices decreased for a third month in a row and at the steepest rate in over 14 years, survey results from the Lloyds Bank unit Halifax and S&P Global showed.

The house price index dropped 2.3 percent month-on-month as households reel under the pressures of a cost-of-living crisis and an economic recession.