Europe midday: Stocks mixed as investors assess costs of pandemic, record economic slump

Stocks across the Continent were trading on a slightly mixed note at the middle of the week as traders assessed the competing forces of governments trying to ease lockdowns while not incurring in further fatalities even as the latest economic laid bare one of the sharpest economic downturns ever.

"Final European PMIs tumbled today, to the detriment of the pound and euro, while markets continue to grind higher to reflect a lack of overall conviction," said IG's Josh Mahony.

"Tentative gains throughout Europe have mimicked sentiment in Asia, with traders understandably lacking conviction given the plethora of contradictory drivers which are in play."

As of 1426 GMT, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was up by 0.27% to 336.4, but the FTSE Mibtel was dipping 0.15% to 17,359.31 and the Cac-40 was slipping 0.18% to 4,474.35.

In parallel, euro/dollar was off by 0.18% to 1.0821.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Italian government bond meanwhile was 12 basis points higher to 1.99%.

Survey results published on Wednesday showed that economic activity fell at a record pace across the euro area last month.

IHS Markit's so-called composite Eurozone Purchasing Managers' Index dropped from a reading of 29.7 at the end of March to 13.6 for April 13.6 (consensus: 13.5).

Commenting on the data, Chris Williamson, chief bussiness economist at IHS Markit, said: "With a large part of the region's economy shut down while COVID-19 infections spiked higher, the economic data for April were inevitably going to be bad, but the scale of the decline is still shocking."