European stocks, U.S. futures stage tentative rebound

European stocks, U.S. futures stage tentative rebound

LONDON- European stocks opened higher on Monday while U.S. futures also traded in the black in a tentative rebound from last week when the spread of the COVID-19 Omicron variant and expectations of tighter U.S. monetary policy rocked global markets. Optimism in Europe overcame a rough session in Asia where the MSCI index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan lost almost 1%. China's central bank said it would cut the amount of cash banks must hold as reserves in an attempt to revive economic growth while the region has seen a series of corporate setbacks after ride-hailing giant Didi decided to withdraw from its New York listing last week. Shares in China's Evergrande plunged 20% after the developer said there was no guarantee it would have enough funds to meet debt repayments. Another giant, Alibaba dropped more than 5% after announcing it would reorganise its e-commerce businesses while U.S. regulatory opposition to the sale of Softbank-owned chip firm Arm pushed the Japanese conglomerate 8% lower. The mood was more upbeat moving West with the pan-European STOXX 600 up 0.7% and S&P 500 futures adding 0.5%. Ten-year U.S. yields were also rising back above 1.38% after losing almost 13 basis points last