America News Agency

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index was 0.27 percent higher at 9:04 a.m. in London, with most sectors in the green. While most major bourses gained, London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.48 percent as drinks giant Diageo plunged more than 10 percent on its first sales decline since 2020.

That was despite strength in other corporate earnings, with shares of Standard Chartered
 up 5.5 percent after the U.K. bank announced its biggest-ever share buyback, of $1.5 billion, and raised its outlook in half-year results.

Oil major BP was up 2.1 percent after hiking its dividend, as it beat second-quarter earnings estimates.

Attention is also on the Federal Reserve’s July meeting, which wraps up Wednesday. Market pricing indicates this could be the last Fed hold before the central bank starts cutting interest rates. Investors will closely monitor the language used in Fed communications after the revision in June of its forward-looking “dot plot” to just one cut this year.

The Bank of England’s monetary policy meeting will follow the Fed on Thursday. The decision to lower or keep rates steady is seen as being on a knife-edge, despite U.K. inflation coming in at the BOE’s 2 percent target for the last two months.

Asia-Pacific markets were mostly lower Tuesday as the Bank of Japan commenced its meeting. U.S. stocks were lower overnight ahead of earnings from Merck, Pfizer, PayPal, Procter & Gamble, and JetBlue.