LONDON, April 10 (Reuters) - European shares turned negative in choppy trade on Thursday, with traders citing a big sale of Euro STOXX 50 futures while disappointing industrial output figures from Italy and France dented sentiment.
The FTSEurofirst 300 was down 0.5 percent at 1,330.85 points by 0943 GMT, retreating from an intra-session high of 1,345.34. Trading volume on the cash index was thin, at just over a third of its 90-day daily average.
Charts, however, showed a spike in volume on the Euro STOXX 50 June future from 0830 GMT as the contract swung into negative territory. Traders said this fall fuelled selling pressure on other indexes.
"It's really light volume trading (on cash indexes)...any decent sized order is going to move things around, so if there is a big offer in the Euro STOXX it would weigh across all of the indices," Matt Basi, head of sales trading at CMC Markets, said.
(Reporting by Tricia Wright; Editing by Francesco Canepa)