By Johann M Cherian, Utkarsh Hathi and Ragini Mathur<\/p>\n
June 5 (Reuters) – European shares slipped on Friday and ended the week lower, as uncertainty about Middle East peace efforts kept investors on edge and technology \u200cstocks paused after a blistering two-month rally.<\/p>\n
The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.3% at 622.66 \u200cpoints and lost 0.5% for the week.<\/p>\n
Brent crude fell for a second straight session, though prices remained near $93 a barrel. Hopes for a diplomatic \u200bbreakthrough between the U.S. and Iran appeared limited after the two countries exchanged strikes earlier in the week, while a U.S.-brokered Israel-Lebanon ceasefire also looked fragile after Hezbollah rejected the pact.<\/p>\n
The resulting spike in energy costs has complicated the inflation outlook. Data this week showed euro zone inflation accelerated in May, prompting markets to price in a 25-basis-point interest rate hike \u200cfrom the European Central Bank next week.<\/p>\n
“A \u2060hike is consistent with the data,” said a group of analysts at Deutsche Bank led by Mark Wall, in a note.<\/p>\n
“A U.S.-Iran deal would not prevent it. After three months \u2060of elevated energy prices, the ECB sees some indirect inflation as inevitable.”<\/p>\n
U.S. JOBS DATA EYED<\/p>\n
Sentiment was also dented by stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs data, which showed employers added far more positions than forecast in May. The figures reinforced expectations that the U.S. Federal \u200bReserve \u200bcould raise interest rates later this year, adding pressure to global \u200bequities.<\/p>\n
Technology stocks were among the top sectoral decliners \u200cwith a 2.9% drop, following a rally that has helped the shares gain about 30% in the past two months \u2014 the most among STOXX 600 sectors.<\/p>\n
The pullback echoed a broader pause in global technology shares this week after disappointing results from U.S. chipmaker Broadcom.<\/p>\n
European chip stocks such as Infineon and Aixtron lost 9.1% and 4.8%, respectively, while AI equipment makers Legrand and Schneider Electric slipped 2.3% and 4.5%, respectively.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the European Commission proposed laws to \u200cboost domestic cloud, AI and semiconductor industries and cut reliance on \u200bU.S. Big Tech, called the Cloud and AI Development Act and Chips \u200bAct 2.0.<\/p>\n
“Tech is coming to Europe and will \u200balmost certainly be a story for the latter years or so of the current decade \u200cand the early years of the 2030s,” said Jeremy \u200bBatstone-Carr, European strategist at Raymond \u200bJames.<\/p>\n
The financial services sector was heading for a 0.8% weekly loss after rising redemption requests from asset managers reignited concerns about strains in private markets.<\/p>\n
Among other stocks, thermal processing services company Bodycote slid 13% after \u200bsaying Apollo Global Management does not \u200cintend to make the firm a buyout offer.<\/p>\n
Single-board computing company Raspberry Pi jumped 27.6%, hitting a record \u200bhigh, after raising its full-year profit forecast.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Utkarsh Hathi, Johann M Cherian and Ragini Mathur \u200bin Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala, Eileen Soreng, Rod Nickel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Johann M Cherian, Utkarsh Hathi and Ragini Mathur June 5 (Reuters) – European shares slipped on Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,4414,11157,219727,85,46,57399],"class_list":["post-478048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-energy-prices","tag-european-central-bank","tag-european-shares","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology-stocks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478048","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=478048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}