European stocks decline in the face of trade tensions

On Thursday, European stocks headed south broadly due to the fact market participants had risky assets shunned, while willing to see whether China and America manage to dodge a trade conflict that would damage the world economy.

Eventually, the pan-European STOXX 600 index had slumped by nearly 0.7%, hitting a fresh four-week minimum.

On Wednesday, American leader told that China had the deal broken it had reached in trade negotiations with America, and vowed not to back down on slapping fresh levies on China’s goods.

As the world's leading economies proceed with their two-day trade negotiations in Washington on Thursday, traders were willing to know if a last-minute truce could prevent a steep increase of levies on $200 billion worth of China’s exports on Friday.

Over seven key sectors lost nearly 1%. Additionally, tariff-exposed auto shares went down by nearly 1.6%, while semiconductor shares lost ground too.

Banco BPM, Italy's number three lender went down by 6% having posted a halving of loan-loss provisions for the first quarter.

In addition to this, the country's leading financial institution by assets UniCredit went down even after it repeated its 2019 objectives and reported a net gain above analyst hopes.

Among the top divers were stocks of ArcelorMittal after the world's number one steelmaker cut demand estimate for its major markets and told it was facing the tough challenges of lower steel prices as well as reduced consumption in the European Union.

As for German wholesaler Metro, it headed south having posted another quarter of diving sales at its Russian business as well as its Real hypermarkets that the company is actually in the process of selling.