Europe midday: Stocks pare losses as Fed moves to 'QE Infinity'
Shares have pared earlier sharp losses after a shift by the US central bank to open-ended quantitative easing or what some analysts termed 'QE infinity'.
That followed a vote overnight in the US Senate on a roughly $1.6bn emergency stimulus plan which failed to pass muster, although traders were confident that a package would eventually be approved by Congress.
Officials in Europe were also pushing for policies similar to those of the Federal Reserve, with Bank of France Governor, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, telling daily Ouest that the so-called European Stability Mechanism should be activated in order to extend credit lines to individual countries.
As of 1306 GMT, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was trading down by 2.01% to 284.57, alongside a 0.77% fall on the German Dax to 8,860.16, while the FTSE Mibtel was 0.32% lower to 15,674.50.
Crude oil futures had also trimmed their losses and were retreating 2.9% to $26.22 a barrel on the ICE.
Stock in jet-maker Airbus was in the headlines after the manufacturer scrapped its dividend payout and full-year guidance even as it announced various moves intended to create a cash buffer of €30bn to help ride out the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
The company's shares were last down 7% in roller-coaster trading.
In the wake of the US Federal Reserve's latest move, Ian Shepherdson at Pantheon Macroeconomics said: " If Congress acts aggressively —$2T-plus, including serious support for the self-employed and gig workers—and the disease is under control by the end of May, the economy will rebound very strongly in the third quarter, with only a modest loss of capacity from businesses going under."
On the coronavirus front, over the weekend, Italy tightened its country-wide lockdown and Spain said that it would extend its measures for another two weeks, to 11 April.
But there was a possible ray of hope as the number of new cases in Italy rose by 10.4% on Sunday to reach 59,138, marking the smallest percentage increase since 21 February, when the contagion first came to light.
The number of fatalities also declined between Sunday and Saturday, from 793 to 651.