Europe close: Gains for the single currency dampen investor sentiment
Stocks on the Continent moved off the 21-month highs hit during the previous session amid a political furore around US president Donald Trump's alleged mishandling of sensitive intelligence that sent the greenback hurtling to six-month lows.
By the closing bell, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was drifting 0.02% lower at 395.91, alongside a dip in Germany´s Dax of 0.02% to 12,804.53 and a fall of 0.21% in the Cac-40 to 5,400.22.
Mixed economic data in the States also weighed on shares.
Overnight, The Washington Post reported Donald Trump had breached the trust of one of its allies by revealing information regarding a possible Isis plot to target airliners by using laptop computers.
Such reports, which were denied by the President´s national security adviser, sent the US dollar index 0.62% lower to 98.29.
Meanwhile, euro/dollar up by 0.95% to 1.1078, with technical analysts at Web Financial Group pointing out that the next level of technical resistance lay at 1.1299, at the downtrend from its April 2015 highs.
For his part, independent strategist Ashraf Laidi pointed out how the spread between 10-year German and US debt had 'broken' above its so-called 200-day moving average.
Speculative positions in favour of the euro also still had a lot of room to continue rising, Laidi said, which in his opinion was a strong argument against those who said optimism around the single currency was already too high.
Nevertheless, the strategist added: "much technical work remains to be done for euro bulls to secure lasting stability."
Automobiles and Travel&Tourism stocks were especially weak, with the corresponding Stoxx 600 sector indices retreating by 0.73% and 0.21%, respectively.
Acting as a backdrop, following her meeting on Monday with newly-elected French president Emmanuele Macron, Chancellor Merkel said EU treaty changes were possible if it made sense in order to strengthen the euro area.
Economic growth in the Eurozone was confirmed by Eurostat at 0.5% quarter-on-quarter (1.7% year-on-year) for the first three months of the year, as expected.
That came amid data showing that the single currency bloc's trade surplus hit €23.1bn in March, up from €18.8bn in the month before (consensus: €18.7bn).
The ZEW index of investor confidence in the German economy improved from 19.5 in April to 20.6 for May (consensus: 22.0).
EasyJet was proving a drag on Travel stocks after it posted a worse than expected pretax loss of €212.0m for the first half of the year.
Car manufacturers were put on the backfoot by data from ACEA showing that registrations in the European Union dropped by 6.8% in April, albeit in part due to there being two less trading days because of a shift in the timing of Easter. A 20% plunge in UK car sales on the back of a new vehicle excise duty and as consumer feel the pinch from Brexit was the other key factor.