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(Reuters) -European shares fell on Thursday, tracking overnight losses on Wall Street after the U.S. Federal Reserve signalled higher-for-longer interest rates, while investors awaited a key policy decision from the Bank of England.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.6% by 0808 GMT, with travel and leisure stocks shedding 2.1%.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq led losses on Wall Street on Wednesday after the Fed held key interest rates steady, as expected, and revised economic projections higher with warnings that the battle against inflation was far from over.
Commodity-linked sectors like mining and energy each fell over 1%, leading losses as metal and crude prices weakened against a stronger dollar.
UK’s FTSE 100 eased 0.5% ahead of the BoE’s decision at 11:00 a.m GMT on whether it will halt a run of rate hikes that stretches back to December 2021 after data showed an unexpected drop in inflation.
Elsewhere in Europe, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) kept its policy interest rate unchanged at 1.75%, while Sweden and Norway’s central banks raised their key policy rate by a quarter percentage point.
Swiss stocks gained 0.5%, while shares in Sweden and Norway fell 0.8% and 1.0%, respectively.
“The SNB’s decision to keep rates unchanged at 1.75% was a big surprise, although it left the door open for further hikes,” Adrian Prettejohn, Europe economist at Capital Economics, said in a note.
Shares in Ocado (LON:OCDO) fell 7.2% after Exane downgraded the British online supermarket to “underperform” following its recent rally, citing concerns over subdued growth in its retail business.
Retailer Next rose 2.2% on hiking its annual profit guidance.
JD (NASDAQ:JD) Sports climbed 7.1% after saying it was on track to post higher annual profit as demand for branded footwear and apparel pushed underlying sales up 12% despite pressure on consumers from rising bills.
