Europe midday: Stocks little changed, even as OECD slashes forecasts

Stockmarkets on the Continent are little changed as investors monitor the news-flow coming out of the National Peoples's Congress in China, amid a lack of fresh catalysts that might spur renewed buying.

"While we got an initial push higher in the wake of the news that a US, China trade deal was within reach, the fact is markets have been rallying for most of this year in anticipation of just such an outcome, begging the question as to how much more is there in this particular tank," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.

Contributing to those doubts, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development on Wednesday slashed its growth forecasts for the Eurozone, calling on the ECB to consider providing further stimulus and on those national governments that could afford it to boost spending.

As of 1145 GMT, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was drifting lower by 0.04% to 375.68, alongside a 0.20% decline for the German Dax to 11,597.07, while the FTSE Mibtel was up by 0.35% at 20,788.66.

Meanwhile, following a mixed close overnight on Wall Street, US equity futures were pointing to modest losses at the start of trading on Wednesday, alongside a slight increase in the value US dollar while crude oil futures were lower on both sides of the Atlantic following a bumper report on America's weekly oil inventories.

In remarks made on the sidelines of the NPC, National Development and Reform Commission vice chairman, Ning Jizhe, said China was willing to meet the US halfway.

But at least some top Chinese officials, such as ex-finance minister, Lou Jiwei, said any concessions from Beijing were unlikely to be big and reportedly labeled US demands "unreasonable and nitpicky".

No major economic releases were scheduled in the euro area on Wednesday, although investors were waiting on the release of consultancy ADP's closely-watched monthly private sector payrolls report.

However, the Paris-based OECD did mark down its forecast for global GDP growth in 2019 from 3.5% to 3.3%.

The OECD also cut its projection for euro area GDP growth from 1.8% to 1.0%, calling for structural reforms and for those governments who could afford to put in place fiscal stimulus to do so.

German growth in particular was now expected to be far weaker, printing at roughly 0.7% instead of the 1.6% previously envisaged.

Italy wasn't expected to fare particularly well either, with the Mediterranean country's GDP seen shrinking by 0.2%, instead of the 0.9% expansion the OECD had anticipated in November.