European mkt stay cautious after China eases pandemic measures

LONDON, Dec 5 (Reuters): European stock indexes opened slightly lower on Monday, finding little support from an easing of China's domestic pandemic restrictions, after market sentiment was dampened by US jobs data on Friday that raised fears of persistent inflation.
Asian shares had been boosted early on Monday by hopes that China taking steps to ease its zero-COVID policy would support global growth and increase commodity demand.
More Chinese cities announced an easing of COVID-19 measures on Sunday, after unprecedented protests against the restrictions last weekend. The news boosted Chinese stocks and pushed the yuan past 7 per dollar. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 1.7 per cent.
But the impact on European markets was limited as investors were cautious about the extent of the reopening, with the MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 47 countries, up just 0.3 per cent on the day.
Europe's STOXX 600 was down 0.1 per cent, Germany's DAX was down 0.4 per cent but London's FTSE 100 was up 0.2 per cent.
"I think for an amount of time we won't know the real definition of zero-COVID because it has been changing and evolving very very quickly in the last two weeks," said Eddie Cheng, head of multi-asset portfolio management at Allspring Global Investment.