LONDON: European shares extended their recent slide to hit a three-week closing low after several indexes breached chart support levels and traders took further profit from a stellar first quarter that is likely to give way to a period of consolidation.
Cyclical stocks led the charge lower, with autos and financials the main fallers, followed by the retailers after forecast-lagging earnings from Hennes & Mauritz .
By the close, the FTSEurofirst 300 index was provisionally down 1.2 percent at 1,059.28 points but still on course for its best first quarter since 2006, although Italy's FTSE MIB led fallers down 3.3 percent.
The cheap central bank money that had fueled the first-quarter rally was now petering out, in a similar fashion to market moves after the last batch of US quantitative easing (QE), and the market now faced several weeks of sideways trade, Nicolas Just, head of core equities at Natixis-AM said.
"The pullback dates back two weeks or so... but it's difficult for us to buy in the hope the market will increase. Investors have been buying on a short-term basis for the last three months and are now wondering what will happen next."
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