Peter Nurse 

Investing.com: European stock markets will open lower Friday due to weakness on Wall Street, Asia and elsewhere overnight. These are due to worries about rising inflation, slower growth and less accommodating monetary policies.

The contract in Germany was trading 0.6% lower at 02:10 AM ET (0610 GMT), while the French contract dropped 0.6%, and the U.K contract fell 0.4%.

European investors were handed a bad handover on Friday by the Japanese index dropping over 2% while mainland China and Hong Kong markets were closed. Blue chip dropped more than 500 point, or 1.6% on Thursday.

September was a difficult month for equity markets globally, with investors having to cope with a combination of slowing growth, China’s regulatory clampdown, concerns over central banks tapering, ongoing Covid cases, fading fiscal stimulus and supply chain bottlenecks. 

On Friday, the disappointing news was repeated. The month-to-month increase in August rose 1.1%, which is a rebound of the 4.5% decrease the previous month, but still below the 1.5% expected.

However, the main focus will be the release of key inflation data as investors try to gauge the state of price pressures and the likely response from the European Central Bank as the region’s economy recovers from the pandemic. 

At 5 AM ET (0900 GMT), the September report is due. It is anticipated to reveal a 3.3% annual increase, an improvement from August’s 3.0%. This will show how determined the European Central Bank is to keep inflation below its target of 2% in the medium-term.

The German car sector will likely be the focus of corporate news Friday with Daimler shareholders voting to potentially spin off its truck manufacturing division from Mercedes-Benz luxury car businesses. Similar moves by Volkswagen (DE) and Mercedes-Benz (DE), two years back, have not resulted in any additional value for Traton (DE), its truck business.

Crude prices stabilized Friday as traders prepared for next week’s meeting of top producers and the potential for additional output to ease the current tight supply concerns.

On Monday, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+) and its allies, led by Russia are expected to meet. They could increase production above the 400,000 barrels/day already agreed for November, December, given the fact that oil prices have hovered near their three-year peak.

The futures closed 0.1% lower at $75.09/barrel by 2:10 AM ET. Contracts rose 0.1%, to $78.40.

The price fell 0.2% to $1.752.90/oz. It traded flat at 1.1580.