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6 years ago

European shares hesitant before Fed

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Trading in European shares was hesitant early on Wednesday as the investors are awaited guidance from the Federal Reserve on future US rate rises.

Benchmarks barely budged, with all the action at the stock level. The pan-European edged up 0.1 per cent while Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE 100 both declined 0.2 per cent.

Inditex fell 1.5 per cent, having jumped at the open after first-quarter results showed a stronger than expected margin, reports Reuters.

Traders said investors were questioning the quality of the margin beat on the post-results conference call, as it came despite a weaker sales growth number.

Jefferies analysts also highlighted first-quarter organic growth came in below expectations.

Inditex led the IBEX lower, underperforming European peers with a 0.7 per cent fall.

Tech stocks were the best-performing, up 1.4 per cent after shares in Dutch fintech firm Adyen rocketed up 80 per cent in its first day of trading.

Peers also involved with payments processing technology got a boost. Ingenico led the way with a 4.3 per cent gain, while Wirecard also rose 2.6 per cent.

Just Eat shares fell 7.2 per cent to the bottom of the STOXX 600 as investors priced in heightened competition after Deliveroo said it would let restaurants use their own riders for orders placed through its app.

Dixons Carphone shares fell 3.6 per cent after the company announced a data breach in which 1.2 million records of non-financial personal information had been accessed.

Paris airports operator ADP topped the STOXX, up 4.9 per cent after the government said it would prepare the legal ground for a sale of some of its corporate assets.

Overall European equities have been searching for direction and are around flat for the year so far.

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