Europe midday: Investors take profits, Auto&Parts sag, Technology paces gains

Investors are booking some profits ahead of the release of the minutes of the US central bank's last policy meeting minutes later in the day.

That followed the largest one-day gain for the US S&P 500 since March, on Tuesday, despite the somewhat more cautious tone from some analysts.

Commenting on the outlook for European equities the day before, JP Morgan's Khuram Chaudhry had told clients: "From a macro perspective, higher bond yields, a stubborn oil price and resilient USD exchange rate suggest the drivers for profit expectations are incrementally more negative than at the beginning of 2018. This outlook suggests risk/ reward is changing and is likely to be far more challenging for stock prices over the coming months."

As of 1226 BST, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was off by 0.14% or 0.52 points at 364.45, alongside a drop of 0.48% or 56.77 points to 11,719.78 for the German Dax.

The FTSE Mibtel meanwhile was down by 0.48% or 95.04 points to 19,623.72.

In parallel, ahead of the European Union leaders' summit in Brussels, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Italian Treasury note was rising by three basis points to 3.48%.

On a related note, French economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, warned that the single currency risked being undermined if member states began taking decisions without taking other European capitals into consideration.

Auto&Parts makers were especially weak, with the corresponding Stoxx 600 sector gauge off by 1.5% after industry lobby group ACEA reported a 23.5% drop in passenger car registrations within the European Union during the month of September.

Going the other way, Technology shares were climbing 0.73% on the heels of a sharp run-up in stock of US outfit Netflix following the release of the video-streaming giant's quarterly results overnight.

Elsewhere on the economic side of things, harmonised consumer prices in the euro area advanced at a year-on-year clip of 2.1% in September, unchanged from the month before, Eurostat said, confirming a previous estimate.

At the 'core' level, CPI was ahead by 0.9% on the year, which was also in-line with economists' forecasts and preliminary figures.

Danske Bank was in the headlines after Denmark's financial market regulator blocked its candidate to take over the reins of the lender as its new chief, Jacob Aarup-Andersen, arguing that the 40-year old had insufficient experience.

Shares of Madrid, Sydney and London AIM-listed uranium miner, Berkeley Energia, plummeted after Reuters reported that the Spanish government was against granting the company the necessary permits to proceed with its project in the Salamanca region.

However, the company clarified on Wednesday that it had received no official notice from either Spain's Nuclear Safety Council nor any other government department to date.