European Stock Futures Higher; Fed Decision, ECB and BOE Meetings in Focus By Investing.com – Investing.com

European Stock Futures Higher; Fed Decision, ECB and BOE Meetings in Focus By Investing.com – Investing.com

© Reuters.

By Peter Nurse 

Investing.com - European stock markets are expected to open higher Thursday as investors digest the Federal Reserve’s move to tackle inflation, ahead of policy decisions by both the European Central Bank and the Bank of England.. 

At 2 AM ET (0700 GMT), the contract in Germany traded 0.6% higher, in France climbed 1.5% and the contract in the U.K. rose 0.4%.

The announced late Wednesday that it will double the pace of its asset tapering program to $30 billion a month and projected three quarter-point interest-rate increases in 2022. 

This suggested the Fed policymakers considered the U.S. economy strong enough to handle the Omicron variant as well as monetary policy tightening while they moved to tackle high levels of inflation.

"The economy no longer needs increasing amounts of policy support," Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a news conference after the conclusion of the two-day policy meeting. 

There’s more central bank activity in Europe Thursday, with both the and the having to strike a balance between the need to support economies threatened by the Covid-19 virus with the desire to combat inflationary pressures.

The BoE is seen as