European stocks ended the trading day positively on Friday, as investors reacted enthusiastically to impressive earnings updates from U.S. giants such as Alphabet and Microsoft. Despite ongoing concerns about potential interest rate increases, the buoyant financial results from top international companies were received positively.
The pan-European stock index, Stoxx 600, rose by 1.11%. The UK's leading stock index, the FTSE 100, climbed by 0.75%, Germany's DAX increased by 1.36%, and France's CAC 40 saw a gain of 0.89%, while Switzerland's SMI rose by 0.74%.
In addition to these, stock markets in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Turkey also showed strong to moderate gains. However, Austria and Ireland saw a decrease in their market figures.
U.S. Commerce Department's data revealed a 0.3% rise in the consumer price index for March besides an increase in the annual rate of consumer price growth, which accelerated to 2.7% in the same month from 2.5% in February, marginally higher than economists' expectations of a 2.6% rise.
The data on inflation from the Commerce Department's report, which is reportedly favoured by the Federal Reserve, also included an analysis of personal income and spending trends for March.
In parallel European economic news, France experienced a dip in its consumer sentiment index to 90 in April from 91 in March, contrary to anticipated growth. In contrast, British consumer sentiment saw improvement in April due to slowing inflation and forthcoming tax cut expectations, as per a survey conducted by market research group GfK. Particularly, the consumer confidence index rose to -19 in April from -21 in March, better than the forecast of -20.
In the UK market, notable movements included a more than 6% rally for NatWest Group, following a slightly less than expected drop in income and profit for the first quarter. Conversely, Convatec Group fell by almost 6.5%.
Germany housed a particularly notable development with a more than 5% rally for Siemens Energy. However, shares of food delivery heavyweight Delivery Hero fell by 16% on rumours of increased competition from Chinese counterpart Meituan in Saudi Arabia.
Finally, in France, Saint Gobain rose more than 6% after its first-quarter revenue beat predictions, while BNP Paribas, STMicroElectronics, Danone and Eurofins Scientific saw declines of 1.3 to 2.4%.
