European equities sink to 2-week minimum

On Wednesday, fears about American bond markets indicating an upcoming recession as well as a still escalating trade conflict between the world's two leading economies brought European equities down after a 3% decline on Wall Street.

The STOXX 600 went down by nearly 1.2%, reaching its lowest value since November 23. Britain’s FTSE 100, France’s CAC 40 as well as Germany's DAX - all slumped by 1.3%.

As for financials, they turned out to be the biggest drag on EU equities because traders dumped sectors extremely sensitive to economic surge. Moreover, Europe's bank index SX7P headed south by 1.7%, which is in line with tech SX8P right after the highly valued American tech sector sold off.

German car makers Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler went down by 0.5%-0.8%, outperforming the DAX because market participants digested what seemed a relatively upbeat result from auto executives' gathering at the White House.

US leader put pressure on the car makers to ramp up investments in America, something the executives told they intended to do, although wouldn’t be able to do if the current US presidential administration went ahead with threatened levies.

Larry Kudlow, White House economic adviser told that he didn’t think that car levies were inevitable.

Equities in valve manufacturers Rotork as well as Weir, supplying the crude industry, went down by 3%- 5% after American energy services company Schlumberger came up with a warning on Tuesday, telling that a sink in fracking activity would affect its North America profits.

By the way, M&A news appeared to be a driver too.

Stocks in Shire managed to rally by 4% at the start, then trimming profits to trade up 2% right after shareholders of Japan's Takeda accepted the takeover of the London-listed pharmaceutical company.

Hargreaves Lansdown went down by 5.4% because Morgan Stanley had its rating downgraded to underweight.

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