European Stocks Futures Lower; Central Banks Offer Hawkish Tone By Investing.com – Investing.com

European Stocks Futures Lower; Central Banks Offer Hawkish Tone By Investing.com – Investing.com

© Reuters.

By Peter Nurse 

Investing.com - European stock markets are expected to open lower Friday, with sentiment hit by central banks tightening monetary policy as cases of Omicron-variant Covid-19 soar.

At 2:05 AM ET (0705 GMT), the contract in Germany traded 0.3% lower, in France dropped 0.7% and the contract in the U.K. fell 0.5%.

Two of Europe’s senior central banks took steps to combat surging inflation on Thursday, with the raising interest rates for the first time since the pandemic started and the saying it will cut its bond purchases in three months' time.

The continued the theme by dialing back its emergency pandemic funding earlier Friday, after the upped the pace of the tapering of its bond-buying program earlier in the week.

The general trend towards tightening monetary policy appears to be clear, even though the different paths taken by central banks underline deep uncertainties about how the fast-spreading Omicron variant will hit economies. 

The U.K. recorded a record number of daily coronavirus cases for the second day running, with almost 90,000 infections confirmed on Thursday. France has tightened the restrictions on arrivals from the U.K., while Italy has done