Bourses bounce on wave of positive news

A WAVE of positive news – including an upgrade to global economic growth forecasts and a successful Spanish debt auction – swept across European markets yesterday, triggering the biggest one-day gain for the Footsie in the past fortnight.

France’s Cac 40 and Germany’s Dax were both up 2.7 per cent, while the FTSE 100 index in London closed 1.8 per cent higher after the yield on Spain’s ten-year bonds eased from the 6 per cent mark seen on Monday.

But, looking ahead to a larger auction of bonds tomorrow, Lauren Rosborough, an analyst at Societe Generale, warned: “It’ll be Thursday’s bond auctions that will truly set the tone for investor interest in Spain.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Sentiment was also helped by the International Monetary Fund upping its global growth forecast for this year to 3.5 per cent from 3.25 per cent, which included an upgrade for the UK to 0.8 per cent from 0.6 per cent.

Better-than-expected first-quarter results from big-name American firms – including Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs and Johnson & Johnson – also helped investors to focus on the positive.

Yusuf Heusen, a sales trader at IG Index, commented: “Having pushed back to the levels seen at the beginning of April, the question is now whether markets can regain lost ground, or whether the eurozone crisis is strong enough to drag us back downward.”