Europe midday: Stocks move higher as tech stocks bounce on Wall Street

Stocks in Europe are moving higher tracking a bounce on Wall Street with investors for the moment shrugging off news that AstraZeneca had paused the phase three clinical trials of its leading Covid-19 vaccine candidate.

For the moment at least investors also appeared to be looking past the possibility that London and Brussels might fail in their attempts to reach a Brexit deal, with the UK leaving the bloc on WTO terms come January as a result.

"European markets are attempting to rebound after recent US-led losses, but domestically-focused stocks are under pressure off the back of fresh restrictions on gatherings," said IG senior market analyst Josh Mahony.

"Meanwhile, AstraZeneca has been dealt a blow as vaccine trials are put on hold."

Against that backdrop, as of 1501 BST the benchmark Stoxx 600 was up by 1.26% to 368.34, alongside a rise of 1.46% for the German Dax to 13,158.11 while the FTSE Mibtel was adding 1.5% to 19,672.15.

Selling in technology stocks abated on Wednesday, helped by a bounce in America's Nasdaq-100 off technical support at its 50-day moving average.

On the pandemic front meanwhile, a flat FTSE 250 betrayed the dampening effect on investor sentiment from news of fresh mobility restrictions in the UK.

AstraZeneca shares were down 1.28%, overnight the drug giant paused ongoing trials for its AZD1222 vaccine candidate due to a "potentially unexplained illness" in one of the participants.

The company described the move as routine while analysts at Goldman Sachs reportedly said that typically such safety data reviews were a matter of days, not weeks or months.

LVMH shares were little changed despite announcing that it had decided to call off its $16bn acquisition of US rival Tiffany after being instructed by the French foreign ministry to seek a delay in the transaction close.