By Shubham Batra
(Reuters) -European shares rose on Tuesday, with investors returning from a long holiday weekend to face a week full of crucial economic data that are expected to offer more hints on the global interest rate trajectory.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index gained 0.5%, with miners and autos leading the gains, climbing 2.17% and 1.9%, respectively. The foods and beverages index, however, slid 0.6%.
Among the most keenly watched set of data will be March inflation for Germany and the United States.
Markets also tracked the Wall Street’s mixed overnight moves as investors digested Friday’s employment report, which showed robust payrolls growth and a welcome, but modest wage inflation cool-down.
“The jobs report did actually contain several indicators pointing to a cooling labour market, even if the market’s main focus was on how it made a May hike more likely,” said analysts at Deutsche Bank Research.
European shares started 2023 on an upbeat note but came under selling pressure in the last two months with the recent banking turmoil keeping risk sentiment fragile, and mixed economic data clouding the outlook for interest rates.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will release its latest outlook for the global economy at 1300 GMT amid a gathering of policymakers at the IMF World Bank Spring meetings.
Investor morale in the euro zone improved in April after a surprise dip in March, in a resumption of improvements of recent months as the assessment of current conditions rose to the highest level in more than a year, a survey showed on Tuesday.
The euro zone’s retail sales for February, due later in the day, will also be on their radar.
Leaving the door open for more interest rate hikes, European Central Bank’s (ECB) policymaker Pablo Hernandez de Cos said on Monday that core inflation in the euro zone is likely to stay high for the rest of 2023.
Among individual stocks, UBS rose 1.9% after JP Morgan raised its target price, with the Swiss parliament holding an extraordinary session to discuss the UBS, Credit Suisse deal.
Glencore rose 2.8% as its top boss plans to meet with some of Teck Resources Ltd’s Canadian shareholders in Toronto this Thursday to garner support for proposed takeover of the copper and zinc miner.
Vodafone rose 0.7% after the telecom major resolved an outage that impacted thousands of its home broadband service users in the United Kingdom, after hours of downtime.
Soitec jumped 5.6% after the company said it expects revenue to be stable at constant exchange rates for the whole of financial year 2024.
(Reporting by Shubham Batra in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)
