Peter Nurse 

Investing.com: European stock markets will open mixed Thursday. This is due to a positive Wall Street close overnight, but investors are still waiting for a crucial policy-setting meeting by the European Central Bank.

At 02:05 GMT (0605 GMT), Germany’s contract traded 0.3% higher than the U.K. contract, which rose 0.2% while France saw a drop of 1.2%.

European markets will see a positive handover Thursday from Wall Street, after falling U.S. Treasury yields led to interest-sensitive growth stocks closing substantially higher. 

Tech-heavy increased their share by more than 2 percent, while the others gained over 1%.

The meeting will focus most on Thursday, as policymakers have to deal with record high inflation and concerns about a possible war-related recession.

The ECB is planning to stop buying emergency bonds in the third quarter. Interest rates will rise “sometime” thereafter. Investors will want to know if there is a more precise schedule by the central bank for removing its unusual stimulus. However, many central banks’ peers have begun tightening their policy.

Due to geopolitical uncertainties, market optimism will limit any gains on Thursday. The Ukraine issued warnings Wednesday about a possible intensified Russian offensive in the eastern part of the country. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden also announced $800 million more in military assistance.

Publicis (PA:), the third largest advertising company in the world, is expected to make headlines in corporate news. Although it exceeded market expectations for the first quarter, Publicis, the second-largest in-house media group, maintained its full-year outlook Thursday despite economic uncertainties.

Oil prices edged lower Thursday, handing back some of the week’s substantial gains after the release of a larger-than-expected build in inventories.

The released data Wednesday showed that the U.S. oil stock rose by more than 9,000,000 barrels last week. This is significantly more than was expected, even though U.S. gasoline inventories fell by 3.6 million barrels.

Both benchmarks remain well above 7% for the duration of the week, as concerns about tightening global supplies continue to weigh on sentiment.

Wednesday’s warning by the International Energy Agency was that around 3,000,000 barrels of Russian oil per day could be stopped due to voluntary or sanctioned embargoes.

U.S. crude oil futures were trading 1.1% lower at $103.05 per barrel by 2:05 PM ET. Contracts fell 0.7% to $107.99 

The price fell 0.5% to $1974.00/oz. However, it was 0.3% lower at 1.0917.