European Equities Close Higher at the End of a Volatile Session

(Bloomberg) -- European stocks closed in the green, after swinging between gains and losses in a volatile session ahead of the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index added 0.2%, erasing a drop of as much as 1% after a private-sector U.S. jobs report. The benchmark fell earlier on downbeat virus news, tensions about China’s national security legislation for Hong Kong and bleak German unemployment data.

Germany’s DAX Index dropped 0.4% as trading resumed following an earlier outage on Deutsche Boerse’s T7 system, on which both Xetra cash equity and Eurex derivatives trading rely. The technical issue disrupted derivatives and stock markets in several Central and Eastern European countries and prompted Denmark to postpone a bond auction.

The Stoxx 600 is entering July, historically its best month of the year, after racking up three straight months of gains. Following a downbeat first quarter, European stocks rebounded in the second to climb 13%, with technology, autos and mining sectors leading the rally.

“We’ve entered a consolidation phase across markets, not just for Europe at the moment, and at some point we will move higher again,” Esty Dwek, head of global market strategy at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions, said by phone. “But because markets have been pricing in a lot of good news already and quite a good shape of the recovery, it might take even more better-than-expected news for markets to keep moving up.”

U.S. companies added 2.37 million jobs in June following a revised 3.07 million gain in May that was previously reported as a decline, according to ADP Research Institute data released Wednesday.

Travel and leisure shares led gains on Wednesday, followed by energy companies. Carmakers, miners and banks trailed.

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