LIVE MARKETS-Europe before the bell: stocks rally calming down

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EUROPE BEFORE THE BELL: STOCKS RALLY CALMING DOWN

Some of the heat is coming out of the surge in European stocks, with futures pointing to an open a touch below flat, but with the STOXX 600 already up nearly 10% in 2025, European equities bulls can't complain.

FTSE futures .FFIc1 are just on the positive side of flat, largely looking through above-expectations inflation data from Britain, but STOXX 50 futures are down around 0.1%.

On the international front, investors have to work out how much attention to pay to remarks on Tuesday from U.S. President Donald Trump he intends to impose auto tariffs "in the neighborhood of 25%" and similar duties on semiconductors and pharmaceutical imports, latest in a series of measures threatening to upend international trade.

There is a fair bit of corporate news to process too, as earnings continue to roll in, particularly in Britain.

HSBC HSBA.L posted annual profit on Wednesday that beat estimates and announced a new $2 billion share buyback, though its Hong Kong shares 0005.HK are only up 0.17%.

Oil major BP BP.L is considering a potential sale of its Castrol lubricants business, which could be worth about $10 billion in a deal, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter, and BAE systems BAES.L said it had secured 33.7 billion pounds ($42.5 billion) of orders in 2024, taking its backlog to a record 77.8 billion pounds.

Elsewhere, Dutch healthcare technology company Philips PHG.AS forecast growth of 1% to 3% in 2025 comparable sales on Wednesday after missing market expectations for the final quarter of last year partly due to a double-digit decline in China.

(Alun John)

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