European stocks retreat on commodities, resources (MarketWatch)  (20-03-2008)

LONDON (MarketWatch) - Stocks in Europe also fell on Thursday as miners were hurt by the nearly $80-an-ounce drop in gold futures over the past two days and as Credit Suisse declined after issuing a warning of first quarter loss.

The pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx slipped 0.5% to 295.98. Commodity producers were leading declines as top miner BHP Billiton was losing 3.1%, and oil giant Total dropped 1.7%.

Gold futures added another $20 an ounce in electronic trading on Thursday on top of the $59 drop on Wednesday, and oil futures fell $1.83 to $100.72 a barrel.

The U.K. FTSE 100, which lists many of the world's leading oil and metals producers, fell 0.6% to 5,511.70, while the DAX 30 slipped 0.1% to 6,354.34 and the French CAC 40 weakened 0.4% to 4,538.52.

The silver lining in this particular cloud is that airlines improved, including Lufthansa, up 2.2%, and easyJet, which rose 1.8% after issuing a warning over jet-fuel prices on Wednesday.

The financial sector’s woes, however, continued to weigh as Credit Suisse dropped 7.3% after it said it expects a first-quarter loss, though a probe into the valuation of certain asset-backed securities resulted in a smaller write-off, of 2.86 billion Swiss francs, than originally anticipated.

Allianz slipped 0.6% after it said it expects further mark-downs in the first quarter, citing deterioration of observable market prices and credit indexes. During 2007, Allianz's Dresdner Bank registered mark-downs of 1.3 billion euros ($2 billion).

Source MarketWatch