European stocks were poised for their first quarterly decline since the early pandemic days of 2020 as economic uncertainty around the war in Ukraine and red-hot inflation sours appetite for risk assets.
The Stoxx Europe 600 Index was down 0.3% at 12:16 p.m. in London on Thursday and was set to wrap up the first quarter with a retreat of more than 5%, snapping its longest quarterly winning streak since 1998. Retail stocks led declines, while energy shares tracked a drop in oil. Utilities and financial services stocks outperformed.
Investors fled equities in the first two months of the year as worries about slowing economic growth were compounded by soaring commodity prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although the benchmark has since recovered losses sparked by the war and is set for its first monthly gain this year, concerns linger about higher costs crimping European earnings as a Treasury yield curve inversion spurs fears of a looming recession.
“It makes sense to be positioned more cautiously,” said Janet Mui, head of market analysis at Brewin Dolphin. “Companies have been enjoying a pretty good run in terms of corporate profits, that is definitely going to slow down this year. Equally, there is a time-line from the inversion of the yield curve to the eventual peak of the equity market, so we don’t want to get out of our equity position too prematurely,” she said on Bloomberg TV.
European stocks have also lagged behind a rebound in their U.S. peers. While the Stoxx 600 is up less than 2% since the beginning of the war, the S&P 500 has gained nearly 9% in what Citigroup Inc. strategists said reflects a “dislocation between stocks that were previously highly correlated. We suspect markets may now be applying too great a discount to European shares against their U.S. peers.”
