Peter Nurse 

Investing.com. European stock market are likely to open marginally less Wednesday. This is due to lower U.S. Treasury yields that have weighed on the tech sector. 

At 02:05 PM ET (705 GMT), Germany’s contract traded 0.1% lower while France lost 0.1%. The U.K contract fell 0.2%.

European indexes began the year strong, with the pan European index rising to an all-time high amid optimism over the global economic recovery.

Europe will likely follow Asia’s negative trend overnight, with investors worried about the rising U.S. Treasury yields, and how this might impact the tech sector which is the main source of Wall Street’s gains over the past few years.

Benchmark hit a 6-week high Tuesday. Five year rates reached an all-time high in the pandemic era, while two-year notes yields hit their highest level since March 2020.

This is because much of Europe has been struggling to contain the most recent wave of Covid-19-related cases.

Data releases in Europe on Wednesday center around final data for the Eurozone’s services and manufacturing industries in December, which may provide early signals of the problems Omicron has caused.

Additionally, investors looking for clues as to when the Federal Reserve announces its first interest-rate hike will study the of the central bank’s meeting last month closely when they are released later in the session.

Tuesday’s stabilization in oil prices was due to traders taking into account rising stocks and a growing group of producers slowly increasing global production.

The releasing data on Tuesday showed that crude oil inventories increased by an impressive 7.1 million barrels, compared to the expected 6.4million barrels.

U.S. crude oil supply information from the U.S. is due Wednesday afternoon.

Earlier Tuesday, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, a group called OPEC+, decided to stick to its plan of increasing output by 400,000 barrels per day in February, suggesting confidence that overall demand wouldn’t be hit too badly by the fresh Covid outbreak.

U.S. crude oil futures were 0.1% lower at $77.03 per barrel by 2:05 PM ET. Contract prices rose 0.1% to $80.07. 

Also, the price of gold fell 0.1% at $1,813.95/oz while it traded 0.1% higher to 1.1299.