Global stock market indexes looked remarkably stable on Wednesday morning, with little in the way of big news to sway them one way or another.
U.S. stock index futures were relatively unchanged with less than 45 minutes before markets open, suggesting that stocks will open flat, following a fairly lacklustre day on Tuesday. Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average were down 1 point. Futures for the broader S&P 500 were unchanged.
Overseas, the moves looked similar. In Europe, the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was up 0.1 per cent and Germany's DAX was up 0.2 per cent in afternoon trading. In Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 fell less than 0.1 per cent in overnight trading.
What are investors waiting for? Two of the top stories on Bloomberg News highlight some of the confusion in the market right now, leaving investors sitting on their hands.
First, the European Commission President Romano Prodi said that the worst of the Greek financial crisis is over and, better still, other European nations will not follow it down the path to crisis.
"For Greece, the problem is completely over," he said, according to Bloomberg. "I don't see any other case now in Europe. I don't think there is any reason to think the euro system will collapse or will suffer greatly because of Greece."
Okay, but along comes another story saying that confidence among Bloomberg users on six continents fell in March due to concern about the fallout from the Greek crisis. The Bloomberg Professional Global Confidence index fell to 53.8 from 54.9 in February. The threshold between optimism and pessimism is 50, which means that users are still leaning toward optimism, but it's close.