European Shares Seen Lower With Tech Stocks In Focus

European stocks may drift lower at open on Thursday, with tech stocks likely to feel the heat after Facebook’s parent firm Meta delivered a gloomy mix of a sharper-than-expected drop in profit, a decrease in users and threats to its ad business.

U.S. index futures declined, with the Nasdaq futures tumbling more than 2 percent as Meta’s tepid earnings fueled fresh worries about the IT sector.

Asian markets were broadly lower in thin holiday trade on concerns about global growth and the intensifying crisis in Ukraine.

Gold hovered below a one-week high scaled in the previous session as the U.S. dollar ticked higher ahead of central bank meetings in Britain and Europe.

The Bank of England is expected to deliver a back-to-back rate hike and raise Bank Rate by 25bps to 0.50 percent, while no changes are expected from the European Central Bank. Any shift in ECB sentiment towards inflation would weigh on markets.

Oil prices eased in Asian trade as the OPEC+ group decided to stick to its planned output increase.

U.S. Treasury yields retreated after a report from payroll processor ADP showed a sharp pullback in U.S. private sector employment in the month of January.

It’s a busy day ahead on the Eurozone’s economic calendar, with services and composite PMIs from member states and Eurozone likely to be in focus.

Across the Atlantic, reports on weekly jobless claims, labor productivity and costs, service sector activity and factory orders may attract attention ahead of Friday’s closely-watched jobs report, which includes both public and private sector jobs.

Economists expect U.S. employment to rise by 150,000 jobs in January after an increase of 199,000 jobs in December. The unemployment rate is expected to hold at 3.9 percent.

U.S. stocks extended a rally to a fourth day on Wednesday, as Google and AMD’s strong quarterly results outweighed disappointing private employment data.

The Dow rose 0.6 percent, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained half a percent and the S&P 500 added 0.9 percent.

European stocks ended broadly higher on Wednesday despite a measure of Eurozone inflation hitting a record high in January.

The pan European Stoxx 600 gained half a percent. The German DAX finished marginally lower, while France’s CAC 40 index inched up 0.2 percent and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 climbed 0.6 percent.

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