The pan-European Stoxx 600 dropped 0.3% during the morning session, bank stocks leading declines with a 0.8% fall in the early minutes of trade, while technology and basic resources were the only sectors to enter positive territory.

· Asian shares were haunted by trade anxiety Tuesday while the risk of more dovish talk from the Federal Reserve pushed down Treasury yields and the dollar, propelling gold to fresh six-year peaks.

Investors are waiting anxiously to see if anything comes of Sino-U.S. trade talks later this week and sentiment was not helped by reports U.S. President Donald Trump would be content with “any outcome”.

Trump is slated to meet one-on-one with at least eight world leaders at the G20 summit in Osaka, including China’s President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Chinese investors seemed none too hopeful as Shanghai blue chips slipped 1.8%. That led MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan down 0.5%.

· Chinese shares ended lower on Tuesday, snapping a six-day streak of gains, as investors locked in profits, while concerns that China and the United States would make little headway toward resolving their bitter trade war this week also hurt sentiment.

At the close, the Shanghai Composite index was down 0.87% at 2,982.07, trimming earlier losses. It was the first daily decline after six straight sessions of gains, its longest rising streak since February 2018

· Japanese shares retreated on Tuesday as the combination of the yen’s rise to a near six-month high versus the dollar and brewing U.S.-Iran tensions hit exporters and curbed risk appetite.

The Nikkei ended the day down 0.43% at 21,193.81.

Tensions between the United States and Iran remained high, with Tehran saying that a U.S. decision to impose sanctions on the country’s supreme leader and other top officials permanently closed the path to diplomacy.

The tense backdrop underpinned the safe-haven yen, which stretched its gains to 106.780 per dollar - its strongest since the start of January.

Reference: CNBC, Reuters