European stocks log gains of around 7% for the first quarter as inflation eases

Shares of JD Sports were last over 16% higher on Thursday after it released a trading update that eased investors concerns after the British retailer issued a profit warning in January.

2024 full-year profit before tax is expected to be in line with the forecasted range and after the first seven weeks of the new financial year, trading is in line with expectations, the company said.

However the trading environment remains “challenging” due to additional promotions and less product innovation, Regis Schultz, CEO of JD Sports Fashion said in a statement.

“We anticipate trading conditions will improve as we move through the year, helped by a busy sporting summer and softer comparatives with last year,” he added.

— Sophie Kiderlin

Steven Blitz, chief U.S. economist at TS Lombard, says markets are likely to push on, even if the Federal Reserve chooses not to cut interest rates this year.

Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday, Blitz said the prospect of one or no Fed rate cuts in 2024 was “getting pretty good.”

“It’s a very big, diverse economy and it’s a very big country. So, you never have all geographic regions and every industry in every corner of the country doing well. There are always leaders [and] laggards, it’s just the nature of the beast, right?” Blitz said.

“The equity investor’s job is to pick out what’s doing better, you know, where the value is but as an economist stepping back, you say no there is no reason for the equity market to go down.”

Take a look at the full story here.

— Sam Meredith

Lindsay James, investment strategist at Quilter Investors, outlines the outlook for global monetary policy and stock markets.

Bruce Carnegie-Brown, chairman of insurer Lloyd’s London, discusses the company’s strongest financial results in years.

Consumer confidence in Italy declined slightly in March, statistics agency Istat said Thursday, bucking a broader European trend of improving sentiment.

However, Italian business confidence improved, particularly in manufacturing and construction.

Consumer price inflation in Italy is running much lower than the euro zone average of 2.6%, coming in at 0.8% year on year in February.

— Jenni Reid

European stocks opened higher Thursday and continued gains through early trade, with the regional Stoxx 600 index up 0.2% at 8:40 a.m. in London.

Market movements have been muted this week, but major bourses were all in the green Thursday morning, with the U.K.’s FTSE 100 and France’s CAC 40 both up 0.3% as Germany’s DAX rose 0.15%.

Figures from Germany on Thursday provided cautiously good news for Europe’s biggest economy, which is struggling with stalling growth.

A “slight upward trend” in employment continued in February, statistics agency Destatis said, with the number of people in work nudging higher by 14,000 last month, up 0.4% on the same period of last year.

The business climate in the retail sector meanwhile “brightened noticeably in March,” according to a survey from the Ifo Institute.

Retailers were more optimistic across a range of sectors, while fewer were suffering from supply challenges.

“The pessimism that has been such a feature of recent times is receding. Business in the run-up to Easter has apparently brought a ray of hope for many retailers,” Ifo specialist Patrick Höppner said.

— Jenni Reid

The U.K. economy fell into a recession in the second half of last year, final data published by the Office for National Statistics confirmed Thursday.

Gross domestic product fell by an unrevised 0.3% in the fourth quarter, the ONS said, following a 0.1% contraction in the third quarter.

Output declined in the final quarter of 2023 across the U.K.’s three main sectors of services, production and construction. Net trade, household consumption and gross capital formation were all lower.

— Jenni Reid

France’s Renault Group on Thursday completed the sale of 99,132,100 shares in Nissan back to the Japanese company for 358 million euros ($387 million).

The trade of Renault’s roughly 2.5% stake generated slightly less than the 362 million euros that Renault had anticipated it may bring in with a sale of more than 100 million shares.

Renault on Thursday said that the cash inflow would improve its net cash financial position, allow faster deleveraging and support its aim of returning to an investment grade rating.

Renault previously sold a 5% stake back to Nissan in December, as it looks to reduce its ownership to 15% from around 43%.

The sales come as the companies restructure their longstanding alliance.

— Jenni Reid

In the wake of Nvidia‘s launch of powerful new artificial intelligence chips, Goldman Sachs is predicting major growth for memory chips used in AI systems.

The investment bank expects the total addressable market for HBM to expand tenfold to $23 billion by 2026, up from just $2.3 billion in 2022.

The Wall Street bank sees three major memory makers as prime beneficiaries of the booming HBM market. Investors can buy three stocks through concentrated exchange-traded funds or diversified funds.

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— Ganesh Rao

European markets are set to open higher Thursday.

The U.K.’s FTSE 100 index is expected to open 31 points higher at 7,958, Germany’s DAX up 56 points at 18,532, France’s CAC 30 points higher at 8,228 and Italy’s FTSE MIB up 71 points at 34,273, according to data from IG. 

Earnings will come from Lloyd’s of London and JD Sports Fashion is set to issue a trading update. German unemployment data and Italian consumer confidence data for March are due.

— Holly Ellyatt