Market update: European stocks in the red as German investor confidence falls

Source: Henderson Global Investors

Overnight, Wall Street closed higher (S&P 500 +1.4%, Dow Jones +1.1%, Nasdaq +1.5%) buoyed by surprisingly better corporate earnings results, positive economic data releases and a rebound in the gold price. Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson and Blackrock reported better than forecast earnings however, the reverse was true for Yahoo! and Intel. New US home construction in March climbed by 7%, the highest rise in almost five years. Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported that March CPI inflation edged down 0.2%, following a 0.7% rise in February, driven by weaker petrol and energy prices. The Federal Reserve reported that industrial production rose at a slower rate of 0.4% in March, however for the first quarter of 2013 it rose by an annualised rate of 5%.

This morning European stocks are trading mainly in the red (FTSE Eurofirst 300 -0.8%, FTSE 100 -0.5%). Yesterday, the ZEW investor confidence forecast for Germany fell from a three-year high in March (48.5) to 36.3 in April. In corporate news, Tesco reported that its full-year pre-tax profit fell by more than half after it took a writedown of £2.4bn to exit its US ‘Fresh & Easy’ business and weakening UK sales.