The Spanish stock index Ibex-35 opened with a slight advance on Tuesday after four days of declines, although the bearish mood in the financial markets was maintained due to fears of an escalation in the confrontation between Israel and Hamas.

In a stock market context of selective buying and bargain hunting after the recent bloodletting, investors await the PMI business surveys during the session, business results on both sides of the Atlantic - with special interest in technology companies in the United States - and the meeting of the European Central Bank on Thursday.

The securities firm Renta 4 expects PMI indicators to show "relative stability with respect to September's figures, with greater weakness in manufacturing than in services, and highlighting the greater resilience in the US (...) compared to the Eurozone, which is weaker and weighed down especially by Germany".

The stock markets will continue to watch closely the evolution of the fixed income market, where the yield of the US Treasury bond exceeded the psychological level of 5% for the first time since 2007, which contributed to the pessimistic tone of the day.

At 0715 GMT on Tuesday, Spain's selective Ibex-35 stock market index was up 15.40 points, or 0.17%, to 9,010.90 points, while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of large European stocks was up 0.05%.

In the banking sector, Santander rose 0.06%, BBVA fell 0.35%, Caixabank advanced 0.45%, Sabadell fell 0.46%, Bankinter dropped 0.49%, and Unicaja Banco lost 0.60%.

Among the large non-financial stocks, Telefónica fell 0.73%, Inditex advanced 0.18%, Iberdrola gained 0.44%, Cellnex gained 0.60%, and the oil company Repsol lost 0.20%.

Enagás, the operator of the gas network in Spain, rose 1.4% after announcing that it is projecting annual results at the upper end of the range of forecasts previously announced.

(Report by Tomás Cobos; edited in Spanish by Benjamín Mejías Valencia)