Europe Post Gains On U.S. Earnings Season Optimism

Europe Post Gains On U.S. Earnings Season Optimism

European stocks kicked off Wednesday session in green, buoyed by results from the U.S. aluminum giant Alcoa proved better than expected after-market Tuesday.

Alcoa, the largest aluminum producer and a bellwether stock for the state of the U.S. economy, started the earnings season with positive outlook for 2013, which helped European and Asian shares move higher.

Alcoa reported fourth-quarter sales of $5.9 billion, beating the $5.6 billion average analyst estimate and posted profit of $242 million, or 21 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $191 million, or 18 cents a share.

The upbeat start to the U.S. earnings season revived investor`s appetite for equities.

With the start of the session 03:20 EST, the French CAC 40 traded higher by 0.56% to 3726.58 points, German DAX rose 0.38% to 7724.84 points, while FTSE 100 traded higher by 0.42% to 6078.83 points.

The gains narrowed into the session but trading remains positive as of 04:37 EST the DAX remains higher by 0.14% at 7706.72 STOXX 50 around 2695.00 and CAC 40 hovering around 3711.59.

As for Europe, Uncertainty is still dominating financial markets, focus shifted to this week`s monetary decisions by the ECB and BoE as they will announce Thursday the first monetary decisions for 2013 in their effort to shore up their economies towards full recovery.