Release of the hawkish minutes from the Fed's June meeting, together with poor economic indicators, are likely to have a negative impact on risk sentiment today.

The release of the hawkish minutes from the Fed's June meeting, together with poor economic indicators, are likely to have a negative impact on risk sentiment and cause European stock markets to open negative on Thursday.

Following losses on Wall Street, the majority of Asian equities declined overnight, and Europe is expected to do the same after the minutes from the most recent Fed meeting revealed that almost all of its participants backed further rate increases in the months to come.

At the June meeting, when the U.S. central bank stopped its year-long tightening cycle due to worries about the strength of the labour market and "unacceptably high" rising inflation, several officials were also in favour of raising interest rates.

After statistics released on Wednesday revealed that eurozone corporate activity fell into contractionary territory last month, economic concerns in Europe are already intensifying.

The final Composite PMI, usually regarded as a reliable indicator of the state of the economy overall, declined from May's 52.8 to 49.9 in June.

The U.K. and Germany are due to announce June construction PMI data later in the afternoon. Earlier today, there was some positive news as German manufacturing orders grew 6.4% on the month in May, far higher than predicted and an improvement from the dip of 0.4% the prior month.

The price of oil dipped slightly on Thursday as worries about more interest rate increases slowing the U.S. economy, which is the world's largest user of petroleum, outweighed falling U.S. stocks.

U.S. oil stocks decreased by roughly 4.4 million barrels in the week ending June 30, according to data issued by the industry association API on Wednesday. This decrease was far more than forecasts for a drop of 1.8 million barrels.

Although official figures from the EIA won't be released until later in the day, a string of stock decreases has raised expectations that demand for oil in the United States would rise over the busy summer travel season.

(Sources: investing.com, reuters.com)