Although the sentiment is still shaky due to concern over China's COVID measures, markets open slightly higher on Wednesday.

Although the sentiment is still shaky due to concern over China's COVID measures, European stock markets open slightly higher on Wednesday before of important Eurozone inflation data.

Tuesday's inflation data from Germany and Spain both came in below estimates, raising the possibility that the Eurozone as a whole has moved significantly closer to its inflation peak.

In an effort to counteract historically high consumer prices, the European Central Bank has begun an aggressive cycle of interest rate hikes, increasing its benchmark rates by 2 percentage points over the past three meetings.

These numbers suggested an earlier and lower end to this year's inflation spike, and consequently a quicker stop to the ECB's rate hike cycle.

The release of the November Eurozone CPI in Wednesday’s session will be the main topic of discussion because European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde warned on Monday that she does not believe inflation has peaked yet.

On an annual basis, this is predicted to be 10.4%, down from 10.6% the month before, but there is now obviously room for the downside.

Investors elsewhere will be mindful of developments in China following gains on Tuesday due to rumours that Beijing wanted to relax its zero-COVID policy in response to turmoil, even though the government has not yet made this desire official.

Chinese company activity continued to decline in November, according to data released earlier. Underlining the country's persistent economic cost of its stringent COVID-related movement restrictions.

Additionally, later in the session, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is set to speak. His speech will be closely watched for more hints about potential changes in American monetary policy.

A report from the industry that showed declining U.S. crude stocks helped the price of crude oil rise in early hours of Wednesday, but gains were constrained by caution ahead of the weekend's OPEC+ summit.

The U.S. government has probably scaled back its drawdowns from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, according to data from the American Petroleum Institute that was released on Tuesday. The data showed that U.S. crude stocks decreased by a much larger amount than expected in the past week, by 7.9 million barrels.

Key developments today:

• Eurozone CPI (10:00 GMT).
• US ADP Nonfarm Employment Change (13:15 GMT).
• US GDP (13:30 GMT).
• Crude Oil Inventories (15:30 GMT)
• Fed Chair Powell Speaks (18:30 GMT)

(Sources: investing.com, reuters.com)