Europe midday: Shares extend gains ahead of US jobs data

(Sharecast News) - European shares extended gains and neared fresh highs on Thursday despite another tech stock sell-off, while investors eyed US jobs data later in the day.

The pan-regional Stoxx 600 index was up 0.57% at 1219 BST. Germany's DAX surged 0.85%, Britain's FTSE 100 gained 0.47%, France's CAC 40 0.85% and Italy's MIB soared by 1.22%.

US markets are expecting a slightly cooler June employment readout with economists pencilling in around 110,000-114,000 new jobs, signalling a slowdown from May's strong 172,000 gain. The data has been brought forward by a day due to the Independence Day public holiday and is likely to be boosted by a large number of temporary jobs related to the World Cup which America is co-hosting.

Oil prices fell further as talks between US and Iranian officials towards a permanent ceasefire appeared to be making progress. Brent crude was down 1.56% to $70.45 while US West Texas Intermediate fell 1.57% to $67.50 a barrel.

In equity news, shares in Sodexo jumped as the French food caterer raised its full-year organic revenue growth forecast.

Tech stocks were in the red after shares of heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix plunged in South Korea on the back of a slump in tech-heavy US Nasdaq Composite.

The sell-off appears to have been sparked by Meta's decision to develop a cloud infrastructure business to sell access to computing capacity, chips and its AI models and w warning from Oracle's that AI investments may not turn into profits.

"Meta jumped nearly 9% on the news, as investors were happy to see that the massive spending that looked to be going nowhere world-changing will finally end up in a potentially profitable business, but the news sounded alarm bells in my ears more than anything else," said Swissquote analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya.

"Meta has spent too much, eaten more than its stomach could take, and now needs to spit part of it out. It took debt on its shoulders along the way. It failed to release a go-to model, and it's now moving to Plan B to make its investments worthwhile. Plan B will cost the company, so in theory, Meta is arguably in a worse place than the company itself thought it would be. I didn't get why it rallied on yet another failed business attempt."

ASM International, Nokia, ASML, Infineon and BE Semiconductor were all lower on the news.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com