European stocks trend higher, supported by chipmakers

European stocks opened higher on Thursday, as chipmakers rose on expectations of increased sales from US semiconductor company Nvidia.

According to “Reuters”, shares of ASM International, BE Semiconductor and Extron rose between 1.6 and 3.2 percent, which boosted the European technology sector by 0.9 percent.

NVIDIA expected first-quarter revenue higher than Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, citing strong demand for its chips to be used for artificial intelligence services.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.1 percent by 0806 GMT, after falling for two consecutive sessions on fears that central banks would raise interest rates for a longer period.

The minutes of the most recent meeting of the Federal Reserve (the US Central Bank) issued yesterday, Wednesday, showed that almost all policy makers support the decision to slow the pace of raising interest rates, indicating that inflation will determine the required additional increases in interest rates.