European markets down on China's property market measures

The German DAX 30 (-0.64%), the French CAC 40 (-0.33%) and the Italian FTSE MIB (-1.36%) are edging lower on Monday, as the Eurogroup meets. The Spanish IBEX 35 is contrarying the trend and is rising by +0.25% after "not as bad as expected" unemployment data. The Spanish unemployment change came in smaller than the 77.5K expected and less than half of the January figure, as it "only" added 59.4K unemployed.

The reason for a "red" start of the week in Europe are China's fresh property market cooling measures. “China’s State Council has given local governments greater powers to cool the property sector in their own cities, including by raising taxes on profits on sales of second homes and increasing required mortgage down payments/interest rates, also for second homes”, wrote TD Securities analyst Alvin Pontoh.

January Producer Price Index in the Eurozone rose 0.6%, beating 0.5% consensus, while the annualized data eased from 2.1% to 1.9%, as expected. The EMU Sentix Investor Confidence for March fell more than predicted, from -3.9 to -10.6, while consensus was pointing to -5.2.

Futures for the American S&P 500, Nasdaq 100 and Dow Jones are signaling a lower opening between -0.30% and -0.40%, also in reaction to news from China. Scheduled in the economic calendar is FOMC Yeller's speech at 13:00 GMT and US ISM New York at 14:00 GMT.