The Spanish stock index IBEX 35 opened with little change on Thursday after three sessions in the red, in a scenario of high geopolitical tension that affects global markets and could put the brakes on the easing cycles started by central banks.

Tension continues to rise in the Middle East, several days after Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah -his attacks have left more than 1,000 dead and 6,000 wounded in Lebanon, according to the Health Ministry- and Iran attacked Israel on Tuesday with more than 180 missiles.

While it is not yet known what targets Israel's response to Tuesday's Iranian attack announced by several senior Iranian officials might target, if Netanyahu's government is inclined to damage Iran's oil infrastructure, the resulting oil price hikes could affect the fight against inflation being waged by several major central banks, according to the Renta 4 brokerage.

"Added to this is another inflationary risk: the port strike on the U.S. East Coast. In this context, we could see an adjustment of the market's excessive expectations of rate cuts, both for the Fed and the ECB, another factor that could lead to some profit-taking on the stock markets," they noted in their daily analysis.

As for macroeconomic data, on this side of the Atlantic, the monthly services PMI for the Eurozone and economies such as France, Spain and Germany will be published, and on the other side of the pond, weekly unemployment, factory orders for August and the ISM non-manufacturing ISM for September in the US.

Traders are also keeping an eye on Friday's US job creation report for clues on the monetary easing cycle.

According to LSEG's IRPR tool, markets reflect 35% for a 50 basis point (bp) cut and 65% for a 25 bp cut, while last week the odds were 54% for the larger cut and 46% for the smaller one.

At 07:10 GMT on Thursday, Spain's IBEX 35 index was down 0.02% at 11,608 points, while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of large European stocks was down 0.33%.

In the banking sector, Santander rose 0.27%, BBVA gained 0.37%, Caixabank advanced 0.39%, Sabadell gained 0.70%, Bankinter gained 0.16%, and Unicaja Banco rose 0.38%.

Among the large non-financial stocks, Telefónica fell 0.14%, Inditex advanced 0.42%, Iberdrola gained 0.44%, Cellnex fell 0.24%, and the oil company Repsol rose 0.58%.

(Information by Javi West Larrañaga; edited by Tomás Cobos)