Europe midday: Stocks drift lower

Stocks on the Continent had mostly drifted lower as investors waited on a key speech by U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke later in the day.

As at 1332 BST, the Stoxx 600 was trading near its session lows, off by 0.33% to 457.81, alongside a 0.30% dip for the German Dax to 16,061.33, although Italy's FTSE Mib was adding 0.16% to 27,621.68.

Front-dated Brent crude oil futures were essentially flat at $75.87 a barrel on the ICE and euro/dollar was at 1.0914.

Commenting on what was on investors' minds ahead of Powell's speech, Stephen Innes at SPI Asset Management said: "The Fed and the Market primarily disagree on how fast inflation will converge to the 2% target, with the Fed thinking it's more sticky than market-based indicators.

"So with Central Banks in the mood to dish out inflation pain these days, investors may need to see some positive inflation data convergence to narrow the wide disparity between the Federal Reserve and the Market's forward inflation expectations before breaking fresh higher ground on US stocks."

Data released earlier had shown UK CPI was unchanged in May at 8.7% (consensus: 8.4%), even as core CPI unexpectedly picked up.

Overnight, a raft of newspapers articles in the state-owned press and former officials called on Beijing to increase its economic stimulus.

In the background, other headlines were focused on alleged Chinese spying activities from Cuba and Beijing's protest after U.S. President Joe Biden dubbed its leader a 'dictator'.