Europe midday: Stocks higher amid hopes for Covid-19 treatments and vaccines

Stocks are holding onto big early gains as investors cheer news that US health regulators have cleared a potentially key treatment for Covid-19, convalescent plasma, for emergency use and might do something similar with the vaccine being developed by Oxford University.

"European markets have kicked off the week in style, with the FDA’s decision to approve the convalescent plasma coronavirus treatment raising hopes that we could see a vaccine fast-tracked before long," said IG analyst Josh Mahony.

Also at the weekend, negotiators from the European Union and US agreed on a mini trade deal around US lobster fishermen, potentially paving the way for more such deals.

As of 1100 BST the pan-European Stoxx 600 was 2.29% higher to 13,057.33, alongside a 1.7% jump for the Cac-40 to 371.36, while the FTSE Mibtel was adding 1.97% to 20,083.78.

The US Food and Drug administration's decision to allow 'emergency use' of convalescent plasma kicked-off a lively debate, due to the lack of placebo-controlled trials proving its efficacy with some alleging that the FDA's decision had been rushed.

Yet some of the available literature indicated that it had been the only treatment that had proven useful during the 1918 epidemic and, on 31 July, the European Commission dubbed the result of research into the efficacy of convalescent plasma as "promising" with full clinical trial results said to be forthcoming".

Cyclical areas of the market were topping gains, with the Stoxx 600 sector sub-index for Oil and Gas climbing 2.85% to 212.09, alongside big gains for Technology, Healthcare and Autos&Parts.

Helping Technology, strategists at JP Morgan told clients: "We remain skeptical with respect to the rotation call, and keep our long-standing OW Tech stance, which we held through the whole of this year and throughout 2019."

Stock in Zurich Airport was near the top of the leaderboard for the Stoxx 600 on the back of slightly higher than expected first half results.

Travel and Leisure issues on the other hand were conspicuously weaker, giving back 0.54% to 174.98.

Dragging on Travel&Leisure names, Sunday saw France report 4,897 Covid-19 cases, the worst tally since mid-April, while the 1,210 seen in Italy were the most since mid-May, Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank pointed out.

Pushing crude oil futures higher were disruptions to US output linked to the approach of two storms, Marco and Laura.

Front-dated Brent was last adding 0.99% to $44.79 a barrel on the ICE.

Euro/dollar was rising 0.35% to 1.1838.