Jul 29, 2022 01:59AM ET
By: AnalysisWatch
European stock markets are expected to open cautiously on Friday as investors cautiously digest an abundance of corporate earnings and key eurozone growth data.
At 02:00 AM ET, DAX futures in Germany were trading 0.7% lower, CAC 40 futures in France were up 0.2%, and FTSE 100 futures in the U.K. were unchanged.
For much of the year, investors have been concerned about whether aggressive monetary tightening will lead to a global recession. As such, recent growth data from the Eurozone has taken center stage this session.
The region is expected to have grown slightly in the second quarter. Economists expect GDP to have increased 0.2% in the second quarter, a slowdown from the quarterly growth of 0.6% in the first three-month period.
French GDP rose 0.5% in the quarter, above the expected 0.2% growth, but downside risks remain, with Ignazio Visco, a member of the European Central Bank's Governing Council, warning Thursday of the risk of recession in the region.
Thursday's data showed that the U.S. economy contracted again in the second quarter. The nation's gross domestic product fell at an annualized rate of 0.9% last quarter after contracting 1.6% the quarter before.
Two consecutive quarters of negative growth are widely considered the technical definition of a recession, but the U.S. does not adhere to that definition.