By Johann M Cherian, Utkarsh Hathi and Ragini Mathur<\/p>\n
June 4 (Reuters) – European shares rose on Thursday as oil prices eased, although investors remained cautious on whether the latest developments in the Middle \u200cEast would lead to a durable peace deal.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures fell 2.8% to $95.06 a barrel \u200cafter Israel and Lebanon agreed on Wednesday to implement a ceasefire.<\/p>\n
However, hopes for a broader de-escalation were tempered after Hezbollah rejected the deal \u200band Israel said it would not withdraw troops from Lebanon, complicating U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to forge a peace deal with Iran.<\/p>\n
Investors were looking for firmer evidence that a breakthrough was possible after several failed rounds of talks.<\/p>\n
The pan-European STOXX 600 finished 0.5% higher at 624.45 points, led by gains in healthcare with French biotech Abivax \u200cjumping 17.8% and rebounding from losses \u2060earlier in the week.<\/p>\n
The STOXX 600 remained on track for a marginal weekly decline, with the Strait of Hormuz, a key global oil-shipping route, still mostly shut.<\/p>\n
Persistent price pressures \u2060have led markets to price in a 25-basis-point rate hike by the European Central Bank at next week’s meeting, according to LSEG data.<\/p>\n
“The well telegraphed policy hike coming next week reveals a preference for curbing upside inflationary risks rather \u200bthan \u200baddressing downside growth risks,” said a group of macro analysts \u200bled by Rune Thyge Johansen at Danske \u200cBank.<\/p>\n
“We expect (Christine) Lagarde to keep full optionality on the future policy rate path, including a potential second summer hike,” Danske Bank’s analysts added.<\/p>\n
Chip stocks eased, with Infineon Technologies and STMicroelectronics down 3.4% and 2.6%, respectively, after U.S. chipmaker Broadcom reported lower-than-expected second-quarter revenue.<\/p>\n
“Europe’s lack of heavy exposure to technology has hurt it in the past, but today it is helping, because investors are rotating away from tech and toward defensive, value-oriented parts of \u200cthe market,” said Steve Sosnick, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers.<\/p>\n
Software \u200band IT stocks extended a recovery from a sharp selloff \u200bover AI disruption concerns. Capgemini, Nemetschek, Dassault Systemes, \u200bSAP and Sopra Steria rose between 6.39% and 8.79%.<\/p>\n
Shares of British financial firms with \u200cexposure to China fell after Chinese media reported \u200bmainland residents were facing tighter \u200brestrictions on opening offshore accounts at major Hong Kong banks. HSBC, Standard Chartered and Prudential declined between 1.8% and 7.6%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Johann M Cherian, Utkarsh Hathi and Ragini Mathur June 4 (Reuters) – European shares rose on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,54,11157,219727,85,46,6807],"class_list":["post-476306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-european-central-bank","tag-european-shares","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-oil-prices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}