Europe open: Stocks gain, but investors cautious ahead of Warsh speech

28th Aug 2026 08:01

(Sharecast News) - European stocks rose on Friday morning despite a raft of national inflation data pointing to an acceleration in price pressures, with sentiment lifted by another drop in the price of oil.

Brent crude was down 0.6% at $87.97 a barrel early on, helping to lift the benchmark Stoxx 600 index up 0.5% to 655.25, with most major indices across the continent making solid gains.

However, according to Patrick Munnelly, partner of market strategy at Tickmill Group, markets were still trading with a "cautious mixed bias". He said investors were "refrain[ing] from taking aggressive directional positions ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's address at the Jackson Hole symposium".

Warsh is expected to give a speech at 1500 BST and is under pressure to give markets a clue about the near-term direction of interest rates given the recent pick-up in price pressures, with this week's release of the Fed's preferred measure of inflation, the PCE price index, coming in above forecasts for July.

"There is much anticipation over his comments on the current Fed thinking, although it has already been made quite clear that the new Chair is happy to eschew the forward guidance to which investors had become accustomed," said Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor.

"While there may be a passing reference to the Fed's determination to return the inflation rate to the 2% target, it may also provide less of a clue than is being called for. Indeed, he could disappoint if he simply sticks to the script, with the theme of the symposium being 'Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy'."

Back in Europe, economic data released early on showed signs of rising price pressures in France, Spain and Germany.

The annual rate of consumer price inflation in France jumped to a three-month high of 2.4% in August, from 2.1% in July, and Spanish inflation hit a three-year high of 4.3%, up from 3.6% previously. In Germany, import prices surged 6.8% year-on-year in July, up from 6.1% the month before, marking the highest rate since late-2022.

Corporate news was thin on the ground, though Strabag was a big mover early on, with shares in the Austrian construction outfit up nearly a tenth after an upgrade to its full-year outlook.