Welcome to the home for real-time coverage of markets brought to you by Reuters reporters. You can share your thoughts with us at markets.research@thomsonreuters.com ON THE BACKFOOT WAITING FOR THE FED (0719 GMT) European stock markets are set to open in negative territory this morning with futures for the main benchmarks trading down between 0.1% and 0.4%. Of course, all eyes are on the Fed which is expected to announce that it is speeding its tapering plans and set to hike interest rates next year to keep inflation in check. Talking about inflation, data just showed British consumer price inflation jumped to an annual rate of 5.1% in November, its highest since September 2011. This means the pressure for the BoE to act tomorrow despite the spread of the Omicron variant will be high. Anyhow, in the meantime investors are keeping a cautious positioning and in Asia, MSCI"s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan eased 0.6%. Prudence is also palpable for the U.S. market with Wall Street futures trading just slightly in the red. There are also a few interesting corporate developments in Europe this morning: - Veolia and Suez gain EU green light for $14.7 bln deal read more - Generali to return up to 6.1 bln euros to investors under new plan read more - Inditex 9-Month net profit more than triples to 2.5 billion euros read more (Julien Ponthus) ***** Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.