[MARKET ANALYSIS] European bourses give back some of Monday's gains, led by the pullback in US equity futures

European bourses are broadly lower, with the AEX (+0.4%) the only index in the green, helped by upside in Prosus (+4.6%) given its investment in Tencent (see more below). Price action has been hard to explain, with focus on the UNGA. An unclear reason could just be a pullback across the equity space given the huge move in US equities on Monday. Sectors are mixed; Retail leads while Insurance lags. Meta's Muse AI agent has spurred renewed optimism over the demand for AI chips, as the app tops the download lists on Apple's App Store and Google Play. Chipmakers in the US surged, in particular CPU companies (Intel +12.1%, AMD +10%), with Wedbush analysts highlighting that agentic AI relies on compute driven applications. This helped the sentiment in Asia, with Taiwan's MediaTek (+3.4%) rising to a new ATH. Meta's Muse was not the only driver for Asia AI/Tech names. In Hong Kong, Tencent (+5.0%) launched its Hy Image 3.5 Preview model, with the Co. saying it achieved results on par with ByteDance's Seedream 5.0 Pro and is slightly better than models from Google and Alibaba. While, for Alibaba (+2.0%), the Co. released a new Zhenwu V900 accelerator, which is triple the performance of its prior chip and can be combined in clusters of up to 500,000 units. Key European movers include: Kingfisher (+8.2%) , raises its FY26/27 adj. PBT guidance; Smiths Group (+4.5%), FY26 revenue raises Y/Y and raises its dividend above estimates; Evonik (+3.3%), reports that BASF explored a potential deal with the Co. earlier in 2026; Bureau Veritas (+1.0%), raises its 2027-28 total revenue CAGR guidance; Ericsson (-3.5%), downgraded to Underweight from Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley. US equity futures are softer across the board, pulling back from Monday's surge, following the above Meta news.