LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - Stocks have started the morning trading sharply lower, with traders focused on the two-day G-20 finance ministers which was set to get under way later in the day in Buenos Aires and ahead of the key US central bank policy meeting on Wednesday.
Ahead of that G-20 gathering, at the weekend European Central Bank Governing Council member Francois Villeroy sounded a confident note on the outlook for inflation, even as Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann called for "a rapid end" to quantitative easing.

Klaas Knot, the Dutch central bank's head, also appeared to have a high degree of conviction in the prospect for higher prices.

Speaking from Buenos Aires, he said: "Inflation has been fairly stable so that provides me with a high degree of confidence that actually inflation will pick up and will at some point approach the definition of price stability."

Against that backdrop, as of 0837 GMT, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was losing 0.88% or 3.34 points to trade at 374.37, alongside a 1.20% or 148.98 point fall on the German Dax to 12,241.57 and a 0.81% or 190.55 point decline on the FTSE Mibtel to 22,673.16.

In parallel, euro/dollar was down by a marginal 0.05% to 1.2281.

Commenting on the market backdrop, Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK, said: "The G20 meeting is likely to be an uncomfortable one for US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, where he is likely to come under pressure regarding the current US approach to dealing with its trade concerns, and the recent tariffs on steel and aluminium.

"While investors remain concerned about tensions between the US and the rest of the world over trade, it's also set to be an important week for the US and UK economies, with the US central bank set to pull the trigger on another rate increase this week at a time when some early concerns about rising inflation have subsided to a certain extent."

On the economic front, ISTAT reported a much weaker-than-expected reading on the country's industrial output, which it said shrank by 1.9% month-on-month in January (consensus: -0.3%).

For later in the session, Eurostat was set to publish its latest readings on the euro area's trade balance and construction output for the month of January, both at 1000 GMT.

Later in the day, Belgium's central bank was set to release its consumer confidence gauge for March at 1400 GMT.

Meanwhile, in corporate news, Daimler was reportedly in the midst of a €3bn effort to ramp-up production from the 2.4m vehicles sold in 2017 to 3m units this year.

In France, oil major Total said it had been awarded a 40-year 20% interest in the Umm Shaif and Nasr concessions by Abu Dhabi's National Oil Company.

Further to the East, in Italy, US activist investor Elliott Advisors sent a letter to Telecom Italia shareholders asking for a "truly independent" board to be put in place to improve performance.

Email this article to a friend

or share it with one of these popular networks:

• DIGG
• FACEBOOK
• STUMBLEUPON
• MIXX
• YAHOO BUZZ
• DELICIOUS
• REDDIT
• NEWSVINE