Stocks gain on improving US jobs market

EUROPE’s principal stock markets put Wednesday’s disappointing performances behind them with a broad recovery yesterday.

After falling by nearly half a percent in the first trading session after the Christmas break, Dublin’s ISEQ remained stable yesterday (although, it was technically up — albeit, by just over one point at 2,845.26 points). There were good gains — the likes of Elan, CRH, Aryzta, C&C, Icon and CPL Resources all showing strong movement — but these were largely levelled out with notable falls for the likes of Grafton, IFG, Tullow Oil, Smurfit Kappa, Ryanair, Kerry Group and DCC.

A tricky bond auction in Italy — where the country’s yields fell from recent record highs but remained at unsustainable levels of nearly 7%; prompting the new government to call for more firepower for the eurozone’s bailout fund — did not spook investors too much, with markets rising despite lower than normal trading volumes.

Instead, it was better than expected weekly unemployment figures from the US, that lifted investor spirits — with trends, there, beginning to show that the jobs market in the biggest economy in the world is improving.

There were notable early gains, in the US, with the Dow Jones, Nasdaq and S&P-500 all up by nearly 1% on the previous day’s close. Meanwhile, in Europe all the major bourses showed modest growth — following Wednesday’s session showing falls in 12 of the 18 national bourses.

The FTSE-100 in London finished up by over 1% at 5,567 points. Elsewhere, Paris’ CAC-40 was up by nearly 2% at 3,127.5 points and the DAX in Frankfurt was up by 1.34%. There were also strong rises on the national benchmark indexes in Spain and Italy.

However, yesterday also saw further losses for the main Asian stock markets — Tokyo’s Nikkei-225 falling by 0.3% to slip below the 9,000 point mark and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong down by 0.65% to 18,397 points.