Europe close: Stocks finish on a mixed note as investors pause for breath

Stocks across the Continent finished on a mixed note but off their session lows on Monday, led by gains for banks and in the oil patch, even as the World Bank forecast the biggest contraction in global GDP in per capita terms since the end of the Second World War.

According to the World Bank, global GDP was set to crash by 5.2% in 2020, roughly twice the depth of the downturn seen in 2008/09.

"The European rebound has eased back throughout the afternoon today, with sentiment somewhat mixed despite the optimism around Friday’s unexpected rebound in the US jobs market," said IG analyst Joshua Mahony.

"With US unemployment falling back, we are now seeing a renewed reason for market optimism, as exemplified by early US gains."

Against that backdrop, the benchmark Stoxx 600 dipped 0.32% to 374.12, while the German Dax drifted lower by 0.22% to 12,819.59, although the FTSE Mibtel managed to put on 0.22% to 20,231.38 and the Ibex 35 added 0.30% to 7,896.1.

To take note of, across the Pond, Wall Street's main stockmarket indices were pushing up against key levels of technical resistance.

Pacing gains were lenders' shares, with the Stoxx sector gauge jumping by 1.57%.

Oil&Gas names were also near the top of the leaderboard, with the group moving higher by 1.13%, after OPEC+ decided at the weekend to extend its production curbs for another month with those countries who had not met their obligations to reduce output promising to compensate for it in the third quarter.

However, concerns over a possible recovery in Libyan and US oil output acted as a drag on Brent.

Front-dated Brent crude oil futures finished the session 2.9% lower to $41.07 a barrel on the ICE.

On the economic side of things, German industrial production was reported at down by 17.9% on the month in May (consensus: -16.0%), amid a 35.3% drop in production of capital goods.

Claus Vistesen at Pantheon Macroeconomics termed the news "grim but old news", forecasting that total output would fall at a quarter-on-quarter clip of 16% in the second quarter before rebounding by 12.1% over the three months to September.