European shares hold steady near 5-1/2-year highs

European stocks held steady near five-and-a-half year highs on Tuesday, with Scandinavia providing many of the top gainers after much of the region was shut on Monday for a market holiday.

 

Stockholm-listed truck maker Volvo was up 4 per cent, with the exchange open for the first time since data showed that orders for heavy trucks in North America rose 50 per cent in December compared to November.

 

"Yesterday you had much of Scandinavia closed, so today is the first day when everything is open and back to normal," Nick Xanders, who heads up equity research at BTIG, said.

 

But moves could be muted ahead of the beginning of the US earnings season and US jobs data later in the week, he added.

 

The top riser in Europe was Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moller-Maersk, which gained 4.1 per cent after selling 49 per cent of Dansk Supermarked, Denmark's largest retailer.

 

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 was flat at 1,309.03 at 0831 GMT, 0.6 per cent off of its highest point since mid-2008, touched briefly on the first trading day of the year.

 

German chemicals group BASF benefited from an upgrade by UBS, which hiked its target price on the stock by 20 per cent and its rating to 'buy' from 'neutral'. It was up 2.8 per cent, contributing the most points to the FTSEurofirst 300.

 

"We argue ...that BASF should resume a trend of rerating vis-a-vis other large cap chemical household names," analysts at UBS said in a note.

 

Broker comment also accounted for many of the day's top fallers, with fellow chemical firm Solvay down 2.7 per cent and Hugo Boss down 2.3 per cent after downgrades from JP Morgan and Societe Generale, respectively.

 

Spanish blue chips gained 0.2 per cent, slightly outperforming for the second day running, receiving a boost from Sacyr, which gained 4.5 per cent after the Panama Canal authority proposed an end to a dispute with a Spanish-led consortium led by the construction firm.

 

Copyright @ Thomson Reuters 2013