By Patrick Graham
LONDON (Reuters) - European shares slipped while Wall Street looked set to open marginally higher after a monthly U.S. non-farm payrolls report showed job creation solidly above 200,000 in October but shy of the 230-240,000 forecast by analysts.
After a choppy run into the jobs numbers, the FTSE index of leading European shares was marginally lower, hit by losses for banking stocks that included an almost 4-percent fall for French lender Credit Agricole.
Futures showed both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average set to gain just under 0.2 percent on opening. Analysts said the numbers were not enough to drive markets higher but also clearly did not derail the U.S. economic recovery.
"It's a slight miss on the headline numbers, but it's still a good enough number for the markets to not be too concerned," said Dafydd Davies, partner at Charles Hanover Investments.
A deepening crisis of confidence in the rouble had dominated morning talk on European markets, with signs the head of Russia's central bank was discussing her options helping the currency recover some of this week's more than 10-percent slide.
Expectations Russia's central bank might step strongly back into the market after limiting intervention to $350 million daily helped turn back the bulk of an initial 3-percent fall on Friday. The dollar was worth 46.419 roubles, having traded as high as 48.65 roubles earlier.
The dollar trimmed gains against the yen after the jobs numbers to stand less than 0.1 percent higher on the day at 115.14 yen, compared to a seven-year peak of 115.52 hit earlier this week. The euro still looked in trouble hitting a two-year low of $1.2359.
(Additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Alistair Smout and Lionel Laurent; Editing by Toby Chopra)
