European stocks end choppy session higher on vaccine hopes
By Sruthi Shankar and Julien Ponthus
(Reuters) – Hopes of a COVID-19 vaccine pulled European stocks from losses earlier on Wednesday, after fears of a no-deal Brexit and anxieties relating to the European Union’s recovery fund had weighed on sentiment.
Ending a choppy session, the pan-European STOXX 600 index <.STOXX> rose 0.2%, with blue-chip indexes in Paris <.FCHI>, Milan <.FTMIB> and London <.FTSE> down about 0.2%
Markets on both sides of the Atlantic got a boost as a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc <PFE.N> and German biotech firm BioNTech <BNTX.O> showed promise and was found to be well tolerated in early-stage human trials.
A series of business surveys released earlier showed broad improvements in manufacturing across Europe and Asia as economies opened up, with IHS Markit’s final euro zone Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) moving closer to the 50-mark separating growth from contraction in June.
Improving economic data out