European Shares Poised For Steady Start

European stocks are set to open on a positive note Tuesday despite weak cues from Wall Street and Asia.

The Asian Development Bank today trimmed its growth forecasts for developing Asia for this year and next, citing risks and uncertainty brought on by the new Omicron coronavirus variant.

The omicron variant dented the protection afforded by two doses of Pfizer Inc.’s and AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid vaccines as feared, researchers found, increasing the risk of infection.

Asian markets were seeing modest losses, with virus worries, China’s property sector woes and caution ahead of monetary policy decision from the Fed, ECB and BOE denting sentiment.

Treasuries held gains and the dollar edged up amid expectations that the Federal Reserve will start to raise rates in 2022.

Gold was little changed while oil prices eased on demand concerns amid doubts over vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection from the Omicron variant.

The Federal Reserve’s two-day monetary policy meeting gets underway later today, with economists expecting the central bank to double the pace of tapering its asset purchase program to $30 billion per month in a move to fight high inflation.

The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are also scheduled to unveil their monetary policy decisions this week.

It’s a relatively quiet day ahead on the economic calendar, with Eurozone industrial production figures for October as well as U.S. producer price inflation data likely to attract attention.

U.S. stocks ended firmly in negative territory overnight as travel-related stocks declined on worries about the fast-spreading Omicron coronavirus variant.

The Dow and the S&P 500 dropped around 0.9 percent each, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite tumbled 1.4 percent.

European stocks also closed lower on Monday amid the focus on upcoming central bank policy meetings.

The pan European Stoxx 600 ended 0.4 percent lower. The German DAX finished marginally lower, France’s CAC 40 index shed 0.7 percent and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 gave up 0.8 percent.