Stocks retreat after BoE minutes

Wednesday 11:30 BST. European equities are in retreat after minutes from the latest Bank of England policy meeting revealed a growing bias against further quantitiatve easing.
The dollar, meanwhile, is strengthening as investors await Ben Bernanke's appearance on Capitol Hill later today.
European equities reversed early gains and moved into negative territory after the minutes from the July 3 and 4 Monetary Policy Committee meeting showed all nine members had voted to maintain quantitative easing at its current level.
At the June meeting, three members had voted to expand QE to provide further support to the economy, including Sir Mervyn King, in his last MPC meeting as governor of the Bank of England.
Incoming governor Mark Carney is instead shifting the bank towards offering markets forward guidance that interest rates will remain low for an extended period. UK jobless claims also fell 21,000 in June - more than double consensus expectations - to the lowest level since March 2011.
Sterling jumped more than a cent versus the dollar to $1.5242 and gilt yields rose after the minutes.
But equities fell. The FTSE 100 is down 0.5 per cent and the FTSE Eurofirst 300 is off 0.4 per cent. That has pushed the FTSE All World, which snapped nine consecutive days of gains in Tuesday's session, into negative territory despite Asian markets including Japan's Nikkei and Hong Kong's Hang Seng closing with moderate gains.
Currency markets are generally in thrall to Mr Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, who will testify before the House Financial Services Committee later today.
The dollar, which has appreciated sharply over the past month in anticipation of an imminent tapering of asset purchases by the Federal Reserve, is up 0.1 per cent against the euro and 0.6 per cent against the yen, while gold has fallen 0.5 per cent to $1,286 a troy ounce.
However, the two leading currency pairs and gold have not broken out of Tuesday's trading ranges as traders await more clues from Mr Bernanke, and trading is expected to be subdued until the testimony.
Indications of stronger economic growth and job creation in the US economy are paving the way for the Fed to throttle back its easy monetary policy. That should eventually allow traders to focus on economic fundamentals, rather than reading the runes of central bank officials. But until the Fed successfully negotiates an exit, markets are likely to remain in thrall to the words of Mr Bernanke.
In today's hearing analysts expect Mr Bernanke to attempt to distinguish between a tapering of asset purchases, which is widely expected this year, and interest rate rises, which could be much further away.
The Treasury market will be closely watched for reaction. US government debt, which sold off as talk of tapering gathered pace over the past two months, has strengthened again over the last week as analysts have dialled back expectations of rate rises.
Mr Bernanke's appearance before the House Financial Services Committee at 10am local time in Washington today is the first of two Congressional outings for the Federal Reserve chairman this week, with a repeat performance in front of the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday.
With no press conference planned for the July Federal Open Market Committee meeting, the testimony from Mr Bernanke will be the Fed's best communications opportunity for some weeks.
Earlier, fresh foreign direct investment figures in China appeared to show multinationals have not given up on the world's second-largest economy. FDI rose 20.1 per cent in June from the prior year, against forecasts of a mild 0.7 per cent gain, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce.
The higher-than-anticipated investment figures place the year-to-date gain 4.9 per cent ahead of last year, at $61.98bn, versus just 1 per cent in May.
Additional reporting by Patrick McGee in Hong Kong

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