LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - Stocks have begun the morning slightly higher ahead of a speech by US president Donald Trump at the United Nations and a monetary policy meeting at that country's central bank.


At of 0931 BST, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was off by 0.20% or 0.77 points at 381.88, alongside a dip of 0.18% or 22.10 points to 12,537.54, while the Cac-40 was lower by 0.11% or 5.90 points at 5,223.46.

In parallel, euro/dollar was advancing 0.30% to 1.1988.

In his speech at the UN headquarters, in New York, Trump was expected to call for other nations to support tougher sanctions being levied against the North Korean regime and to take aim at Iran's own nuclear programme.

"The latest geopolitical situation appears to have settled down for now but with President Trump set to speak at the United Nations later today it wouldn't be too much of a surprise if North Korea decided to send him a message so to speak, perhaps in the form of another missile test. While the rhetoric appears to have settled down a touch it probably wouldn't take much to set it all off again," commented CMC Markets's Michael Hewson.

Regarding the Federal Reserve's deliberations, by and large analysts expected rate-setters in Washington DC to announce the start of their balance sheet taper but there was far less unanimity when it came to what the Fed's exact guidance on interest rates in 2018 might be.

For their part, analysts at Barclays Research expected the Fed's so-called 'dot-plot' to be consistent with one further interest rate hike in 2017 and two more in the following year.

As of Tuesday morning, Fed funds futures were assigning odds of roughly 56.9% to a December 2017 hike.

Back in Europe, but still on the economic front, the ZEW institute's economic sentiment gauge for Germany increased by 7.0 points in September to reach 17.0 (consensus: 12.0).

Construction output in the single currency was up by 0.2% in July, Eurostat said.

The Eurozone's seasonally-adjusted current account surplus rose from €22.8bn in June to €25.1bn for July, according to the ECB.

German chemicals giant BASF agreed to purchase rival Solvay's Polyamide unit for €1.6bn.

IAG has joined the fray for all or part of bankrupt German peer Air Berlin, according to a report that was later confirmed to Digital Look by a spokesperson at the British Airways owner.

Mexico's FEMSA sold a 5.24% stake in Heineken valued at €2.5bn.

ChemChina agreed to relinquish control of Pirelli ahead of a planned IPO.

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