Europe is on a charge
Stocks across Europe popped at the open on Thursday morning after a positive day in Asian markets, driven by a rally in the price of oil on Wednesday and overnight.
The biggest winner in Western Europe so far this morning has been Britain's FTSE100, which jumped as much as 1.45% in the first ten minutes of trading, push stocks in the UK above 5,900 points, after closing at around 5,825 yesterday evening. It has since pared the gains a little, and is up around 1.3% as of 8:15 a.m. GMT (3:15 a.m. ET). Here's what it's doing:
Some of the FTSE's optimism this morning may be down to anticipation of the Bank of England's monthly announcement on interest rates. Governor Mark Carney isn't widely expected to change interest rates, having signalled strongly that a hike is some way in the future.
Mike van Dulken, Head of Research at Accendo Markets says that the rally "comes after a largely bullish session in Asia with commodities rallying, notably oil, thanks to an evaporation of USD resilience on expectations the Fed will reign in over-egged hawkishness. This delivered a welcome overshadowing of global growth concerns for markets hooked on cheap money."
Elsewhere on the continent shares are uniformly green, although most are up between 0.5-1% so far on the day. The one big exception is Russia, where the RTSI index has responded strongly to the rally in oil, and is up more than 4% in mid-morning trading.
Here's the European scoreboard:
- France's CAC 40 - up 0.33%
- Germany's DAX 30 - up 0.52%
- Eurostoxx 50 - up 0.63%
- Spain's IBEX 35 - up 0.53%
- Italy's FTSE MIB - up 0.7%