European Stock Futures Largely Unchanged; Fed Meeting, Credit Suisse in Focus

European Stock Futures Largely Unchanged; Fed Meeting, Credit Suisse in Focus

By Peter Nurse 

Investing.com - European stock markets are expected to open largely unchanged Thursday after the Federal Reserve concluded its latest policy-setting meeting and as the corporate earnings season continues.

At 2:05 AM ET (0605 GMT), the contract in Germany traded flat, in France rose 0.1% and the contract in the U.K. was flat.

Investors have been parsing through the Federal Reserve , released late Wednesday, with the U.S. central bank saying that "progress" had been made toward its economic goals, potentially bringing forward the time when it might start reining in its bond-buying program. That currently runs at $120 billion a month.

That said, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell made it clear, in his subsequent press conference, that the U.S. economy still had to make substantial progress on jobs before any form of tapering, a more dovish tone that the statement suggested.

"Powell hinted that the Fed has already reached one out of two targets and that full employment and inflation ‘moderately exceeding the 2% target' are not prerequisites for a taper decision. Interesting months are upcoming," said analysts at Nordea in a note to clients.

European markets have received a positive handover from Asia