In the wake of a sell-off in tech stocks on Wall Street that should encourage investors to be cautious on the eve of the big meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, European stock markets are expected to open sharply lower on Wednesday.

Around 7:30am, the CAC 40 futures contract lost 0.4%, according to data from broker IG.

This morning, European index futures fell this morning, as investors await several European inflation indicators as well as the minutes of the latest Fed monetary policy meeting, before the opening of the US central bank symposium on Thursday in Jackson Hole.

According to data from broker IG, the DAX 40 futures contract in Frankfurt dropped 0.6%, while the FTSE 100 futures contract in London lost 0.2%.

On the monetary policy side, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) cut interest rates again on Wednesday. It cut its key interest rate from 3.25% to 3%, in line with economists' forecasts

The RBNZ said it had considered a 50 basis point reduction and expected further declines if inflation remained moderate. New Zealand's central bank started cutting rates a year ago, in response to falling inflation and a sharp rise in unemployment.
The New York Stock Exchange ended mostly in the red on Tuesday, hampered by a sell-out movement on the big names in technology.
The Dow Jones erased its gains at the beginning of the session despite the support provided by Home Depot (+3.2%), which benefited from well-received quarterly results. The index closed with a short rise of 10 points, at 44,922.27 points, after setting a new all-time high during the session. For its part, the S&P 500 fell by 0.6% to 6,411.37 points. The Nasdaq Composite, rich in technological stocks, fell by 1.5% to 21,314.95 points.
Palantir (-9.4%), Advanced Micro Devices (-5.4%) and Nvidia (-3.5%), technological megacapitalizations whose share prices rose sharply this year, were among the biggest declines of the session.
In Asia, the Nikkei index on the Tokyo Stock Exchange dropped 1.5% on Wednesday at the end of trading. The Shanghai Composite Index was stable, while the Hang Seng on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange fell by 0.6%.

The two-year stock rate rose 1.2 basis points to 3.77%. The 10-year US Treasury bond rate rose 1.4 basis points to 4.32% at around 7:30am

The greenback gave up 0.1% against the Japanese currency, at 147.51 yen. Around 7:30am, the euro lost 0.1% to 1.1637 dollars.

As the market assesses the chances of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, oil prices rose slightly on Wednesday. Preparations for sending a multinational force to Ukraine in the event of a peace agreement accelerated on

Around 7:30am, the October North Sea Brent contract listed in London gained 25 cents, or 0.4%, to $66.05 per barrel. The October contract for light sweet crude (WTI) listed on Nymex rose by 27 cents, or 0.4%, to 62.04

Mukesh Sahdev of Rystad Energy reported that “the likelihood of the United States imposing tougher sanctions on Russia is decreasing and the market expects the Russian oil market to recover as a result of the peace talks.”