London: European shares rose on Wednesday after better-than-expected Chinese manufacturing data gave investor sentiment a boost, with some in the market looking to increase their short-term bets on banks and miners.
Banks, many of which have exposure to euro zone sovereign debt featured among the best performers, with the STOXX Europe 600 Banks index up 1%.
Cylical mining stocks were also strong after the Chinese data, with the STOXX Europe 600 Basic Resources index up 0.7%.
“We are seeing investors putting money in the market for a short-term and are investing in miners and banks depending on the newsflow,” said Joshua Raymond, Chief Market Strategist at City Index. “No-one wants to take overnight risk.”
“We are expecting miners to do well on the Chinese data, but there is a lot of data out today which investors will be looking at to see if the global economy is growing.”
At 0811 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was up 0.5% at 1,042.61 points.