Europe close: Stocks higher as Wall Street moves into the black for the year
European stocks finished mostly higher, as the Dow Jones Industrials continued climbing, following the S&P 500's push into positive territory for the year during the previous session, thanks to a weaker-than-expected reading on US consumer prices.
In the background meanwhile, traders were also keeping tabs on events in the Middle East following an Israeli counter-strike overnight against Iranian military assets in Syria, which led some analysts to caution of the rising risk of war in the region.
By the close of trading, the benchmark Stoxx 600 had drifted lower by 0.12% or 0.47 points to 391.97, alongside a sharp drop for the FTSE Mibtel of 0.96% or 232.66 points to 24,033.90.
Weighing on the Italian equity benchmark, the yield on that government's 10-year notes had broken ranks to rise by another five basis points to 1.94%.
Triggering the move, on Wednesday evening, Silvio Berlusconi acquiesced to a demand from the Five Start movement that the political party he leads remain outside of any coalition government with the League.
The German Dax on the other hand was ahead by 0.62% or 79.81 points at 13,022.87 with the Cac-40 up by 0.20% or 1.32 points to 5,545.95 alongside.
Buoying investor sentiment, earlier the US Bureau of Labor Statistics had reported that 'core' US CPI rose by 0.1% last month, undershooting economists' forecasts by a tenth of a percentage point.
Those CPI figures prompted Mickey Levy at Berenberg Capital Markets to tell clients: "The underlying U.S. consumer price inflation trend is stabilizing after accelerating since late 2017 and should quell concerns for now about a widespread and sustained heating-up of inflation."
The more dovish than expected remarks from Governor Mark Carney at the press conference following Thursday's MPC meeting were also on traders' radars.
The flow of economic data meanwhile was on the light side, although Italian industrial production figures for March did surprise to the upside, rising by 1.2% month-on-month (consensus: 0.4%).
In parallel, Greece's unemployment rate was reported to have edged higher to 20.8% in February, from the upwardly-revised reading of 20.7% for January.