© Reuters.
By Peter Nurse
Investing.com – European stock markets are expected to open marginally lower Wednesday, after a fatal missile strike to a village in NATO-member Poland raised political tensions in the region.
At 02:00 ET (07:00 GMT), the contract in Germany traded 0.1% lower, in France dropped 0.2% and the contract in the U.K. traded largely flat.
NATO ambassadors are set to hold a meeting early Wednesday to discuss the , which killed two people in a village close to the frontier with Ukraine late Tuesday.
However, Western leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, have urged caution at the G20 meeting in Indonesia, keen to avoid a major escalation with Russia, especially as doubts exist over where the missile was fired from, while Moscow has denied responsibility for the strike.
Russia fired a missile barrage at Ukrainian infrastructure on Tuesday, causing energy outages across the country.
Elsewhere, the latest inflation data out of the U.K. showed that rose 11.1% in October from a year earlier, a jump from 10.1% the prior month and a 41-year high, suggesting the Bank of England will have to continue hiking for some time to come.
The data comes just a day before Chancellor Jeremy Hunt reveals a number of measures designed to fill an estimated £50 billion (£1=$1.1881) gap in public finances, likely including tax rises and spending cuts.
Over in the U.S., the Republican party is now very close to securing a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, a move that would likely result in two years of gridlock in Washington after President Joe Biden’s Democrats retained control of the Senate.
Additionally, former President launched a bid late Tuesday to regain the presidency in 2024, as widely expected.
Turning to the corporate sector, Siemens Energy (ETR:) will be in the spotlight after the struggling company reported a hefty quarterly net loss, hit by a charge due to the restructuring of its Russian division.
It also decided against paying a dividend for 2022, citing challenges related to its struggling wind turbine division Siemens Gamesa (BME:).
Oil prices weakened Wednesday, with investors seeking more clarity after the missile strike on Poland and in the wake of mixed U.S. inventory data.
A potential escalation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is likely to boost oil prices with the prospect of more supply disruptions, but Western leaders have been keen to downplay the incident.
Data from the , released Tuesday, indicated that U.S. crude inventories shrank almost 6 million barrels last week, far more than expected, but gasoline inventories grew 1.7 million barrels.
By 02:00 ET, traded 0.9% lower at $86.17 a barrel, while the contract fell 0.7% to $93.21.
Additionally, rose 0.1% to $1,777.75/oz, while traded 0.4% higher at 1.0391.
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