European shares closed higher on Thursday after a series of lukewarm sessions, as investors welcomed the U.S. Federal Reserve's overnight interest rate cut and assessed a policy decision from the Swiss National Bank. The pan-European STOXX 600 ended 0.5% higher at 581.17 points, after a muted start to the session amid renewed worries about lofty tech valuations following cloud computing giant Oracle's hefty AI spending plans. Major regional bourses were broadly higher, with France's CAC 40 up 0.8% and London's FTSE 100 up 0.5%. In the STOXX 600, at least 19 sectors were in the green, with...
Asia-Pacific markets are set for a mixed open on Friday, after Wall Street benchmarks the Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 posted their worst day in nearly two months on a downbeat Microsoft earnings forecast and MetaTrader results. Traders await a raft of economic data from the region, including Australia's third-quarter producer price index reading and China's Caixin manufacturing purchasing managers' index for October. Japan's Nikkei 225 appears set for a weaker open, with futures in Chicago at 38,470 and its Osaka counterpart at 38,370 against the index's last close of...