10 Things You Need To Know Before European Markets Open

Good morning! Here are 10 big stories you need to hear about before markets open in London and Paris.

South-Eastern Europe Is Reacting Badly To Russia's Aborted Pipeline. President Vladimir Putin announced the decision to curtail the south stream gas pipeline earlier this week, but Bulgarian, Hungarian and Serbian governments say they have already invested in the scheme and had no advance warning, according to the Financial Times.

Latin America Is Hitting A Wall. Latin America's economies, hit by falling investment, will grow just 1.1 percent in 2014 - their lowest level in five years, a UN commission on the region said Tuesday.

European Retail Sales Are Coming. At 10 a.m. GMT, European retail sales numbers for October are out., and analysts are expecting a 0.6% increase from September. That's the last hard data on Europe's economy that we'll see before Thursday's ECB monetary policy announcements.

Hong Kong's Students Won't Retreat. Protesters vowed to stay put at protest sites in key parts of the Asia financial centre on Wednesday in their demand for electoral reforms, defying calls by leaders of the civil disobedience movement Occupy Central for them to retreat.

Asian Markets Look Mixed. Hong Kong's Hang Seng is currently trading down 0.65% just ahead of the close, while Japan's Nikkei climbed another 0.32% in Wednesday's session.

GM's Auto Sales In China Are Up 5.3% Year On Year. General Motors and its Chinese joint ventures sold 310,094 vehicles in China in November, up 5.3 percent from the same month a year earlier, the US automaker said on Wednesday.

The Australian Dollar Hit A Four Year Low After Bad Economic Data. The economy expanded by 0.3 percent in the three months to September, down from 0.5 percent in the previous quarter, to take the annual rate of growth to 2.7 percent. The Australian dollar dropped to as low as $0.839 after the news, the weakest in four years.

China's Services Sector Picked Up Pace In November. HSBC's services PMI, a major business survey, rose from 52.9 to 53, and the government's official PMI rose from 53.8 to 53.9, with any number over 50 pointing to growth.

A US Financial Watchdog Says Risks Are Rising. New rules to make banks safer after the credit crisis are imperfect and could boost less-regulated activities in the so-called shadow banking system, according to the Office of Financial Research. The body also said that the Federal Reserve's annual check of the financial health of the banking system, known as stress tests, fell short on several counts.

Morgan Stanley Thinks China's Rallying Stocks Could Shoot Higher. The bank thinks there's a chance of an "ultra-bull" scenario as the central bank keeps easing, according to Bloomberg. Shanghai stocks are already up 34.8% this year.