European bourses drifted slightly lower in holiday-dampened trade on Monday afternoon, but world No. 1 steelmaker Arcelor made a splash on its debut and bid talk sent UK utility Innogy Holdings soaring.
At 2.50 p.m., the FTSE Eurotop 300 index of leading pan-European blue chips was 0.23 per cent lower and the narrower DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index was off 0.18 per cent.
With US markets closed for President's Day and unable to offer direction, volumes were light, although some analysts warned it would take more than the resumption of trade on Wall Street to shake shares out of their current torpor.
Investors have yet to work through the current reporting season while the next series of quarterly earnings does not kick in until around mid-April.
French foods giant Danone is set to report after today's close.
Germany's Volkswagen and Norway's Statoil are among the heavyweights due to report earnings tomorrow, along with the world's biggest retailer Wal-Mart and world No. 3 advertiser Omnicom over in the United States.
Arcelor's stirring debut helped counter the effect of profit-taking in the high-flying basic resources sector, which shed 0.7 per cent having added almost ten per cent so far this year.
The steelmaker - born out of the merger of France's Usinor, Luxembourg's Arbed and Spain's Aceralia - surged over 10 per cent to more than 15 euros on its market debut in Paris, Madrid and Brussels.