Recovery demonstrates the fickleness of global markets

THE fickle nature of the markets was again on view yesterday, as most major exchanges, including Dublin, rebounded.

While Thursday’s talk of an extended global recession resulted in heavy losses — the Dublin market fell by more than 8% on the day — yesterday’s speculation that the Fed may be gearing up to announce fresh interest rate cuts and the fact that some major European stocks had good days, resulted in a day of varied recovery.

By midday New York time, the Dow Jones was up by 1.8% and the Nasdaq had gained 1.9%. There were similar gains of 2.7%, 2.4% and 2.6% on the FTSE, Paris CAC 40 and Frankfurt DAX, respectively.