Europe open: Stocks tread water following recent gains
German investors' heads in the clouds as SAP raises guidance
Sentiment dips in German and French manufacturing
Stocks on the Continent are treading water despite record closes for some of the main market gauges on Wall Street overnight and news that trade talks between the US and China were set to resume over the following week.
Nonetheless, even as the S&P and Nasdaq Composite notched up record closes on Tuesday night, on the back of the latest raft of corporate updates, some market watchers said the sector leadership, including strong gains for healthcare betrayed, caution on the part of investors.
And survey readings on manufacturing sector confidence out in the euro area on Wednesday were also a bit of a damp squib.
In any case, City-based traders pointed to recent gains in stocks, saying a pullback was overdue, what with the French Cac-40 not far from 11-month highs and, according to Chris Beauchamp at IG, given a profit warning on Wednesday morning from Japanese carmaker Nissan, together with a poor outlook out of US chipmaker Texas Instruments.
As of 1022 BST, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was down by 0.04% to 391.20, alongside a drop of 0.53% to 21,781.26 for the FTSE Mibtel.
To take note of, on Tuesday evening Italy's ruling coalition scrapped plans to shift part of the city of Rome's debt to the state's books.
Rating agency Standard&Poor's was set to judge the country's debt rating on Friday.
But the German Dax was adding 0.41% to 12,285.76 on the back of a surge in SAP's share price, after the software giant raised its forecast for full-year profits on the back of a strong performance at its clod business.
Elsewhere on the corporate side of things, the Financial Times reported that Deutsche Bank and UBS had held "serious" talks at merging their asset management arms.
Meanwhile, the IFO institute's closely-followed business confidence gauge for Germany printed at 99.2 for April, down from a reading of 99.7 in March (consensus: 99.9), in part as sentiment among the country's manufacturers deteriorated.
The mood also worsened among French businessmen in manufacturing, with INSEE's confidence gauge slipping from a reading of 103 to 101.
Top US trade negotiators would travel to Beijing at the start of the following week, with both sides aiming to have a draft deal in place by May, Bloomberg reported citing two persons familiar with the discussions.