FUTURES FLASHING RED AS MARKET AWAITS KEY EARNINGS (0647 GMT) Futures are flashing red this morning, with key earnings starting to trickle in ahead of a busy week for corporate reporting as investors mull the interest rate paths of major central banks.
Futures on the STOXX 50 are 0.3% lower, while FTSE futures are down 0.4% and DAX futures are 0.1% lower. Nestle reported slightly better-than-expected first-quarter sales on Tuesday, as the world's biggest packaged food company increased prices to offset tepid sales volume. Switzerland's biggest bank UBS Group reported a 52% slide in quarterly profit, and set aside more money to draw a line under its involvement in toxic mortgages as it prepares to integrate fallen rival Credit Suisse Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kazuo Ueda on Tuesday stressed the need to keep monetary policy ultra-loose for now, but signalled the chance of raising interest rates if inflation and wage growth overshot expectations. Meanwhile, economists polled by Reuters think the European Central Bank will almost certainly add 25 basis points to its deposit rate on May 4 and then take it to 3.50% or higher in June as core inflation remains persistently high.
(Lucy Raitano)
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