European Shares Seen Opening On Firm Note

European stocks are seen opening a tad higher on Friday after U.S. shares recovered from an early slide to end on a positive note overnight.

Asian markets were broadly lower and U.S. equity futures held steady as traders weighed comments from Fed officials and the new EU sanctions, including an embargo on Russian coal imports.

The UN General Assembly suspended Russia from the Human Rights Council over civilian killings in a 93-24 vote, with 58 countries abstaining.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned that the Ukraine conflict could last for years.

Elsewhere, Shanghai, the global financial hub and China’s biggest city, has become the epicenter of Covid-19 cases in the country, casting doubt on President Xi Jinping’s stringent zero-tolerance strategy.

The dollar inched up to a new two-year high, while gold prices slipped after Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans and his Atlanta counterpart Raphael Bostic all backed bigger interest rate hikes to contain inflation.

Oil drifted lower and was poised for a 3 percent weekly drop after the emergency oil reserve release announcement from consuming countries.

Overnight, U.S. stocks ended a choppy session higher and the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note hit a three-year high, as investors pondered the outlook for inflation and interest rates.

The Dow edged up 0.3 percent, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index inched up marginally and the S&P 500 gained 0.4 percent.

European stocks gave up early gains to end lower on Thursday after the release of relatively hawkish minutes from the March 9-10 ECB policy meeting.

Policymakers appeared keen to roll back stimulus and argued that conditions for lifting rates had either been met or were about to be met.

The pan European Stoxx 600 eased 0.2 percent. The German DAX and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 both dropped around half a percent while France’s CAC 40 index slipped 0.6 percent.

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