Europe midday: Stocks move higher on more 'dovish' Fed, but only slightly

Stocks are edging slightly higher across the Continent shortly after midday as investors digest a somewhat more 'dovish' or conditional policy bias from central bankers in the States and await a barrage of economic data.

Overnight, the head of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, told a conference in New York that official interest rates in the US were just below the bottom part of the range that policymakers believed was 'neutral', whereas at the start of October he believed they were still a long way from being neutral.

Commenting on the potential implications of those remarks, Michael Hewson at CMC Markets UK said: "The fact is each Fed member has a different assessment of where “neutral” is, which might suggest that Chairman Powell was trying to insert slightly more ambiguity into market expectations of what the Fed might do next year.

"A December rate rise still seems the most likely outcome, however expectations about the pace for rates next year has become much more ambiguous, which helps give the Fed much more wriggle room."

As of 1305 GMT, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was edging higher by 0.11% or 0.33 points to 357.72, alongside a gain of 0.39% or 19.53 points to 5,002.77 for the Cac-40 and an advance of 0.14% or 28.13 points to 19,143.29 on the FSTE Mibtel.

Back in Europe, all eyes were on the latest inflation readings out of the Eurozone, with CPI printing below forecasts in both Germany and Spain.

In the euro area's largest economy, the Ministry of Finance reported that the rate of increase in harmonised consumer prices slowed from a year-on-year clip of 2.4% for October to 2.2% in November (consensus: 2.3%).

Meanwhile, in Spain, according to INE, the annual rate of harmonised CPI dropped by six tenths of a percentage point to 1.7% (consensus: 2.0%).

On a more positive note, the rate of unemployment in Germany declined by a tenth of a percentage point in November to reach 5.0% (consensus: 5.1%).

In parallel, the European Commission revised the November reading on its euro area industrial confidence index from 3.0 to 3.4.

Still ahead for later in the day were readings on personal income and spending for the month of October at 1330 GMT, alongside the release of the minutes of the US central bank's 7-8 November policy meeting, at 1900 GMT.

Shares of Deutsche Bank were a top faller on the back of news that the German authorities had ordered a raid of its Frankfurt headquarters, linked to the Panama Papers, involving 170 agents.