Europe midday: Stocks caught in downdraft from Wall Street, Asia
Stocks are trading sharply lower come midday, tracking the big declines seen in Asia overnight, where investors replicated the losses sustained on Wall Street during the previous session.
Some strategists were clearly worried, cautioning clients to "not buy the dip".
On that note, before the opening bell on Thursday, Barclays's Maneesh Deshpande, wrote: "In our view the two main catalysts behind the current equity selloff were recent commentary by Fed officials on terminal level of rates and by the Trump Administration on US-China trade.
"Fundamentals have not changed but we expect volatility to remain elevated in the short term and do not recommend buying this dip."
Against that backdrop, as of 1154 BST, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was down by a hefty 1.77% or 6.51 points to 360.40, alongside a 1.65% or 85.81 point drop for the Cac-40 to 5,120.37 and a retreat of 1.30% or 151.82 points to 11,561.68 on the German Dax.
From a sector standpoint, Technology was again pacing losses, with the corresponding Stoxx 600 sector gauge down by 2.27% to 420.49, alongside a 1.92% fall in Basic Resources to 425.53.
In parallel, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Italian government note was climbing by nine basis points to 3.59%. Similarly-dated French OATs on the other hand were higher, pushing their yields down by three basis points to 0.88%.
Overnight, Tokyo's Nikkei-225 dropped 3.89% to 22,590.86 and the Shanghai Shenzen CSI 300 by 4.80% to 3,124.11.
Nevertheless, the focus of the session was expected to be the US consumer price index data at 1330 BST, although investors were still waiting on the release of the minutes of the European Central Bank's most recent policy meeting, at 1330 BST, followed by possible remarks out of ECB chief, Mario Draghi, who was attending the annual IMF/World Bank meetings in Bali, Indonesia.
The flow of fresh data thus far on Thursday had been rather thin, with only final readings on consumer prices in France, Spain and Portugal referencing the month of September having been published.
Out of those, the only report that yielded any surprises was Spain's, with the national statistics office bumping-up its estimate for the year-on-year rate of change in harmonised CPI from 2.2% to 2.3%.
Meanwhile, in France, INSEE confirmed that its measure of harmonised CPI was ahead by 2.5% last month, as did Portugal's own statistics unit, saying CPI was up at 1.8%.