A Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicle on Nov. 20, 2024, in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Yan Dobronosov | Global Images Ukraine | Getty Images<\/p>\n
LONDON \u2014 European stocks opened the last trading week of the year in largely flat territory.<\/p>\n
The pan-European\u00a0Stoxx 600<\/a>\u00a0was up 0.07% shortly after markets opened, hitting an intraday record high.<\/p>\n The U.K.’s FTSE<\/a> index opened slightly higher, while France’s CAC 40<\/a>, Germany’s DAX<\/a> and Italy’s FTSE MIB<\/a> were slightly lower. <\/p>\n European defense stocks were falling in morning trading following weekend peace talks between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. <\/p>\n Shares of Leonardo <\/a>fell 3.9% while Kongsberg<\/a>, Hensoldt<\/a>, Rheinmetall<\/a> and Saab <\/a>fell between 2% and 3%, respectively. The Stoxx Europe aerospace and defense index was 1.3% lower.<\/p>\n French biotech Abivax<\/a>\u00a0was up 3.1% shortly after the open, among the top performers in Europe’s blue-chip index. The clinical stage drugmaker has been the subject of takeover rumours and optimism<\/a> about the prospects for its lead asset \u2013 a treatment for ulcerative colitis. <\/p>\n Trading volumes could be lighter this week, given the ongoing Christmas holidays, and with regional markets set to close Thursday for New Year’s Day. <\/p>\n The prospect of a peace deal for Ukraine before the year’s out is fading after Trump and Zelenskyy said on Sunday that progress had been made during talks to end the war but that “one or two very thorny issues” remained<\/a>.<\/p>\n Oil prices rose as investors weighed the prospects of a deal to end the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n U.S. crude oil<\/a>\u00a0rose 1% to $57.34 a barrel, while global benchmark\u00a0Brent<\/a>\u00a0gained 1% to $61.27. Both benchmarks fell about 2% on Friday.<\/p>\n Trump had been targeting a peace deal\u00a0<\/a>before Christmas, but Ukraine and Russia remain far apart when it comes to territorial concessions demanded by Russia and security guarantees coveted by Ukraine. <\/p>\n Speaking to reporters following talks in Florida on Sunday, President Zelenskyy said they had come to an agreement on around “90%” of\u00a0a 20-point peace plan and that the leaders had fully agreed on security guarantees for Ukraine. Trump was slightly less bullish on that front, saying an agreement was “close to 95%” done.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, silver<\/a> climbed above $80 an ounce for the first time early Monday before paring some gains. The precious metal was last seen trading at $75.60 an ounce. Gold<\/a> dropped 1.2% to last trade at $4,499 an ounce. <\/p>\n There are no major European earnings or data releases on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicle on Nov. 20, 2024, in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. Yan Dobronosov | Global Images…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":477369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[133,64,81,39285,55034,69,3350,156,14027,93016,117,2219,135,273,67,132,68,27231,7999],"class_list":{"0":"post-477368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-breaking-news-markets","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-business-news","11":"tag-cac-40-index","12":"tag-dax","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-foreign-policy","15":"tag-france","16":"tag-ftse-100","17":"tag-ftse-mib","18":"tag-germany","19":"tag-italy","20":"tag-markets","21":"tag-ukraine","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-world-economy","26":"tag-world-markets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115802336396439122","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}